YourThurrock Comment Piece
YEARS ago, the very whiff of cuts in the voluntary sector would have seen them manning the barricades. Well, that’s dramatic licence but you certainly would have seen demonstrations, petitions and a whole gamut of passionate picketing in order to protect services.
YourThurrock understands that cuts in voluntary services could be as much as 13% across the board but to date haven’t heard a whiff of protest.
It seems The Beehive, where the Council for Voluntary Services are based, has yet to be stung into action.
Even in the short (15 month) life of YourThurrock, there have been some considerable examples of protest: Chadwell Primary School, Corringham Car Parking, Aveley Green Belt.
One hopes that the summit of protest from the voluntary sector is a strongly worded letter.
But the question is: have the voluntary sector helped themselves? Over the past fifteen months, we have filmed at countless community engagement events and to be frank: there are no members of the public there. Just a lot of people chatting to each other and being paid to do it. Plus many of the events have taken place during the day, when the public are at work
That may be totally irrelevant but it may be something the council have also noticed. Or perhaps they are selecting you because they know that you won’t put up a fight.
We know there are many considerable figures out there. You know where we are….
Good analysis. Many don’t bother to fund raise, why should they hold bring and buy sales or hold raffles or even bother to try and get funds from other sources, when they can just hold their hands out for a big dollop of council (ie the taxpayer) cash once a year.
There must be hundreds of individual charities and voluntary organisations in Thurrock but it looks like it is the same old faces that are first in the queue for their cash from the council coffers. Meanwhile those charities and voluntry organisations that dont gut funded by the council raise theur own funds and put that money to good use.
Perhaps this is the tonic those organisations that will be affected need to make them look elsewhere and start fund raising for their own cash instead of expecting a regular supply via the taxpayer.