Thursday, 10 April 2008

Hertfordshire is home to nine CVSs and is often identified as a potential candidate for mergers - sometimes called “rationalisation” or “modernisation”. Today have heard of another potential merger of CVSs in Norfolk. I am not against mergers in all cases and I do not know the circumstances in Norfolk. But I worry about this trend.

Many people say that mergers deliver economies of scale that release resources for support work. But this is an article of faith rather than a proven fact.

To my mind, where mergers are well-resourced they create over-large organisations that culturally and geographically are ever more distant from the community-based organisations that CVSs are supposed to support.

Where the mergers are poorly resourced, they create the illusion that support services exist when in fact they do not and the voluntary sector ends up colluding with local government that says: “here’s £25, go and run an infrastructure service for 1.5 million people”.

In today’s Third Sector magazine, Nick Seddon also writes questioning the current drive for mergers in the voluntary sector. I will await developments in Norfolk with interest.