Council Leader Jane Meagher writes about the need to support Edinburgh’s third sector
With our population growing and more people struggling with the cost of living, Edinburgh’s third sector is in a precarious position.
According to the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, seven in 10 charities now cite financial trials as their biggest challenge, up significantly in just two years. Traditional funding streams from the public sector, which provide vital grants to allow charities to operate in our local communities, are under growing pressure too.
Echoing these concerns, a report to the Scottish Parliament’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee late last year made it clear that short-term funding cycles are creating financial instability for charities, diverting time and resources away from what’s important – delivering valuable services for vulnerable people.
This predicament came into sharp focus for Edinburgh earlier this year when the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board (EIJB) – which oversees health and social care spend in the city – had to make difficult decisions to help it make necessary savings of close to £30m. Dozens of local projects and charities have seen their funding pulled as a result.
Immediately, councillors united to intervene and see what could be done to prevent the devastating closures and redundancies these cuts could bring. Thankfully, we’ve been able to step in to provide emergency £2m funding, providing short term relief for 46 projects.
Yesterday at Policy and Sustainability Committee, we also agreed how to spend a contingency fund worth £273,473 to further support primarily small, local projects and organisations in our communities which have lost EIJB funding. Grants of £10,000 will be made available this autumn to help with the resilience of the sector.
Yet, the fact remains that the council also faces significant financial challenges. We remain the worst funded council in Scotland and plugging this gap will be difficult in future years. To that end, we need to find a longer-term sustainable way forward for this sector which provides so much good.
Tackling poverty is one of our city’s top priorities and we cannot achieve this without the support of projects which focus on prevention.
To get ahead of this, we’ve engaged the Edinburgh Partnership to conduct a review of how it supports and works with third sector organisations in Edinburgh, and to ultimately find solutions for improving funding certainty in future years.
This includes how grant funding and commissioning is delivered, how third sector organisations monitor and report on their work, and what in-kind support is provided.
We want to hear about how we can make it simpler, provide more stability, and collaborate to help those who need this sector’s support most.
You can share your views through our Consultation Hub webpage, or by attending a workshop from now until Thursday 5 June.
Results will be shared with those who take part and with the wider third sector, and will be reported to our next Policy and Sustainability Committee in August.
In a successful city like Edinburgh, it is unacceptable that 80,000 people are living in poverty– including close to a quarter of all children – which makes tackling inequality and preventing poverty one of the biggest challenges facing the capital.
This article first appeared in the Evening News
