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Voluntary sector’s bleak future as Mayor axes all funding

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Croydon Voluntary Action, the council-funded umbrella organisation that coordinates the activities of much of the “third sector” in the borough, says it wants to “re-set” its relationship with the Town Hall as Mayor Jason Perry prepares to axe all funding for voluntary organisations.

No charity: Jason Perry receives £81,000 per year as the council’s Mayor

The Conservative Mayor announced in the autumn that the cash-strapped council’s Community Fund was “coming to a natural end” when its current round of £2.6million funding, distributed over the course of three years among more than 30 charities and community groups, finishes in March.

Despite the council’s financial collapse in 2020, the CVA and many of the volunteer groups managed to maintain their services for the vulnerable and needy throughout the covid pandemic.

Ahead of a meeting with Mayor Perry next week, Steve Phaure, the chief exec of the CVA, has issued a five-page statement which outlines the likely impact of Perry’s funding freeze.

Among the voluntary and charity groups affected will be:

Citizens Advice Croydon, which supports around 5,000 residents annually on issues at work, welfare benefits, housing problems, debt problems and relationship breakdowns and social isolation. “All of which now faces an uncertain future,” Phaure says.

The Asian Resource Centre, based at Broad Green, will no longer be able to offer its support to nearly 600 people who attend its and its partner groups’ activities every week.

South West London Law Centre, based in Davis House, provides nearly 1,000 people with advice and support through its clinics on working immigration and asylum, community care, employment and discrimination, housing, debt and welfare rights cases.

Croydon Vision will lose the funding for its Support and Enable Programme, resulting in an average of 15 residents per month diagnosed with sight loss no longer being able to access transport, lunch, social activities and educational workshops.

Croydon Drop In’s loss of funding for its outreach service will impact 1,500 young people every year. CDI has supported young people presenting after being diagnosed with depression, some with suicidal feelings, self-harming, eating issues and incidents of sexual abuse.

Mind in Croydon’s services will leave 2,500 local residents without any employment support, welfare benefits advice and mental health support. The cuts, Phaure says, will impact disproportionately people with disabilities.

Age UK Croydon’s Memory Tree Café has supported more than 200 people annually. “Its loss of funding means a step-in reverse for Croydon’s ambition to become a dementia friendly borough – and the 1,000 people annually supported through Age UK’s now unfunded Information and Advice service will be left without much needed support during the cost-of-living crisis,” Phaure says.

Phaure’s statement is issued on behalf of 32 organisations in total, all of whom will lose every penny of council funding from the end of March. They also include the Garwood Foundation, the Croydon Almshouses charities, Crisis and New Addington Good Samaritans.

Phaure’s statement also contained a warning for Mayor Perry and the council.

Warning: Steve Phaure

The council needs to prepare to deal with the many cases arising from this withdrawal of support now turning up at the front door of Fisher’s Folly. “Where will they go in the future to access support? How will the council front-door manage the increase in referrals?” he said.

Phaure’s paper talks about the voluntary sector working with the council to access as-yet untapped grants and investment in a belated effort to plug the gaps left by the Mayor’s funding freeze.

But as one Katharine Street source said today, “Isn’t that what the CVA is supposed to have been doing all these years?”

After ploughing through the CVA document, the source said, “The statement is just one long moan about how the teat of Croydon council public sector funding has run dry.

“There is no vision in the CVA statement that’s for sure.

“The CVA is a bureaucratic organisation that thrives on taking the cream off the milk for the voluntary sector with its levies on public sector funding flows.

“It is a contradiction in terms to have a voluntary sector which is not really voluntary but more a means of delivering local authority services through lower-paid charity sector staff and volunteers, a sector reliant not on private charity but on public sector contracts.

“There are some larger charities based in the borough that really should be doing more.

“A communitarian approach to creating a Croydon that cares for each other is a vision that Mayor Perry has not pursued.

“The chance is there, post-covid, to tap into the goodwill that neighbours showed to each other. ‘Croydon cares’ is the vision lacking from the Mayor and from the CVA’s statement.”

Read more: Perry about to giveaway millions in social housing flog-off
Read more: This is the stark human cost of the borough going bankrupt


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