The Department of Culture, Media and Sports has just completed a 12-month research project on Local Infrastructure across the UK.

The headline themes are detailed here:

• Across the UK there was considered no agreed definition of Infrastructure. Infrastructure and its role appear to be agreed locally, against local priorities and needs.
• Infrastructure was identified to have five functions: facilitating funding, organisational development, advocacy, volunteering, and community participation, and convening or representation.
• The most direct benefits from Infrastructure accrue to frontline VCSE organisations; with benefits to local communities through stronger frontline organisations and increased volunteering activities; and statutory bodies gain a greater insight of local needs, improvements in commissioning processes and local policy decisions. The most important factor in the quality of Infrastructure provision is being knowledgeable about the local area.
• Infrastructure organisations were seen as an effective bridge that can support open and honest communication between the VCS and public bodies especially in context of funding or commissioning relationships. Infrastructure activities led to three broad outcome pathways of: better targeted resources, improved policy making, and increased community trust, empowerment and belonging.
• There are no simple or straightforward answers to the question of how best to organise, support and strengthen local Infrastructure. Infrastructure works best when there is a close relationship with the public sector. This is easiest to achieve when decision-makers in local government and health systems take a strategic interest in Infrastructure that comes from a recognition of its value and its ability to contribute to their own priorities.
• Strengthening Infrastructure will almost certainly continue to rest on taking a local first approach and on ensuring that any reform is delivered with patience, sufficient resource and recognition of local concern and sensitivities. Enabling strong Infrastructure is based on a combination of factors: funding, local knowledge, effective relationships, and support.

SAWN’s comments:

There is nothing new about these headline themes. Most worrying is that after many decades of having Infrastructure across the UK the DCMS have not worked with local organisations to arrive at a definition. The very fact that there isn’t one nationally is a weakness and detracts against the fantastic work that Infrastructure organisations do across the UK. SAWN is clear about the essential aspects of its work: Supporting Community organisations to survive and thrive: Delivering volunteering initiatives: Advocating for the sector (never more needed in these challenging times): Representing the sector as honest brokers and proffering the VCS as a solution to some of the issues the Local Authority and out Health colleagues face. Infrastructure needs support though: It needs support from the rest of the VCS so we can stand together and exert pressure on our systems to examine us in closer detail and use us as agents of service delivery. It also needs funding appropriately. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and as more of the VCS is required to prop communities, Infrastructure needs to be there to provide that wrap around support.