Funding for England’s community empowerment networks (CENs) has dropped by 40% overall, according to research due out next week.

A report based on interviews with CENs in mid-March by umbrella group Urban Forum is expected to highlight growing uncertainty for the government’s local empowerment vehicle because of problems getting core funding.

The research will also reveal that funding pressures are forcing CENs to move away from advocacy work towards more lucrative activities, despite the fact the forthcoming white paper on empowerment is likely to emphasis advocacy.

New Start this week learned that Rotherham’s CEN had folded due to lack of funding. Networks in Lewisham and Hull have already closed after their funding ended in March.

Voluntary Action Rotherham (VAR) is trying to gain transitional neighbourhood renewal funding to make sure representation work still happens in the borough, with a decision due in May or June.

Shirley Macredie, CEN manager at VAR, said new employees would have to be recruited if the funding bid was successful because all the staff employed by the CEN had now left the organisation.

‘In the meantime VAR is supporting the representatives in a minimum capacity to continue in their roles on the LSP boards and other decision-making boards,’ she said.
Meanwhile, the manager of another CEN has told New Start that its local strategic partnership is moving towards other community involvement mechanisms that the local council has set up.

The manager, who wished to remain anonymous, said the organisation that employs the CEN workers had been told to find ‘other voices’ that the LSP doesn’t hear enough, instead of using networks set up by the CEN. ‘Will someone tell me why the disability forum, the faith network, the BME network and the over-50s forum doesn’t fulfil four of those identities?,’ she said.

CENs were set up in 2001 by the neighbourhood renewal unit to enable community involvement in decision making. But funding for CENs became more inconsistent from 2006 after it started to be directed through the LSP in the form of the safer and stronger communities block of local area agreements. Past research by Urban Forum has revealed an 80% drop in funding for CENs following the introduction of LAAs.

A survey by New Start in March revealed half of the 14 CENs who responded were pessimistic about their future. All were already making redundancies, with some in the process of winding down altogether.

by Rosie Niven
rosie@newstartmag.co.uk