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Mark Isherwood: I move amendment 1 in the name of William Graham. |
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The future delivery of the new Communities First programme must support an anti-poverty agenda and alleviate severe and persistent poverty. Contrary to claims in the Welsh Labour manifesto last year, Welsh Conservatives would have left more money than Labour in the supporting communities and people’s budget, which funds Communities First. Further, unlike Welsh Labour’s manifesto, the Welsh Conservative manifesto recognised that the second phase of Communities First comes to an end in 2012. Conscious of the evidence findings in a succession of reports on the Communities First programme, our manifesto stated that we would set-up a network of community anchor organisations to support and encourage community enterprise and social entrepreneurship. We are also conscious of a need to maximise outcomes from the reduced funding for Communities First detailed in Welsh Labour Government budgets. Although some £300 million has been spent on Communities First so far, adult learning participation rates in these areas have gone down. |
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The 2006 interim evaluation of Communities First found little evidence of rigorous monitoring and evaluation and that Communities First was still a long way away from producing the regeneration outcomes that were, and still are, its main aims. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that Communities First had led to quite marginal improvements only, while positive changes were mainly down to a mix of housing tenures and younger populations with higher skill levels moving in. As a member of the Audit Committee in the second Assembly, I successfully called for an inquiry into Communities First to be included in the Wales Audit Office’s forward work programme. The resulting Wales Audit Office report, published in July 2009, stated that |
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'serious weaknesses in financial planning and the processes for funding the programme led to widespread variation in funding with no clear rationale for funding decisions’. |
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It found that there was an absence of basic human resource and financial planning, that monitoring was weak and that there was no evidence that anything was done with the feedback. Hence, our amendment 1, which not only notes that the new Communities First programme will require a foundation of effective corporate governance but also that that will enable the creation of independent community organisations. |
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We must be concerned by the Wales Audit Office findings that identified corporate governance failings and worse in the Plas Madoc Communities First scheme. We must also be concerned about alleged corporate governance failings in other Communities First grant recipient bodies since, and that the Welsh Government appointed the Association of Voluntary Organisations in Wrexham, as grant recipient body for Plas Madoc Communities First, after AVOW’s own serious governance problems had been identified and exposed in an employment tribunal judgment. Neither AVOW nor the Welsh Government has provided an answer to the question: when did AVOW inform the Welsh Government about the employment tribunal and its findings, which were known on 14 March 2011? |
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The joint paper published by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action and Community Development Cymru, 'Communities First: A Way Forward’, detailed proposals for an achievable future vision for communities that would be more effective at tackling deprivation and building stronger communities with less bureaucracy and cost, and more community ownership. The paper sought to chart a way forward that builds upon existing successes, overcoming the design flaws inherent in the programme and seeking to create an achievable vision for the future that is more effective, at least 20% cheaper and less bureaucratic. They found that |
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'the original design of the programme was flawed in that it did not have clear aims but, nevertheless, created over ambitious expectations’. |
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The design meant that ownership was confused between local community, local authority and central Government. They said that the missing link in achieving community ownership was the lack of a longer-term vision in the programme, enabling communities to move beyond programmes to establish their own independent institutions, which can then, in turn, work as equal partners in delivering real outcomes that the community values and owns and is willing to mobilise around. |
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They propose that one way forward to fill the missing link is through a community anchor, where community organisations in each area would be invited to apply for anchor status as a focus for services and activities meeting local need. They concluded that this approach would lead to more independent, resilient communities owning and controlling their own organisations as assets. They stated that it would move beyond programme and Government dependency and provide the community-owned dimension that is often sought, but seldom achieved in creating a better Wales. |
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