1.5: Civic Society
Building a stronger civic society by working collaboratively with communities to improve and deliver public services Other Information:
Actions: building a stronger civic society -- We will work with stakeholders to produce a regularly updated Civic Health Index
from early 2010, to enable citizens and leaders to assess how well civic society is faring and how it can be enabled to thrive.
We will pilot Social Impact Bonds as a new way of funding the third sector to provide services. the Department for Communities
and local government (Clg) is actively developing a pilot to use social impact Bonds to draw in new investment into third
sector service provision. this has the potential to radically change how government funds the third sector, by rewarding social
investors for work which reduces future social costs. We will finalise the model for a Social Investment Wholesale Bank, providing
capital to organisations delivering social impact and ensuring the long-term sustainability of social enterprises. the process
of engaging with potential providers of the Bank will commence by Budget 2010. We plan to provide the necessary launch investment
for the Bank from the Dormant Accounts scheme, subject to resources, as well as funding for youth facilities to ensure that
in every community there are places to go for young people, and funding for financial capability. We will also strengthen
our support for community asset transfer and ownership by promoting wider use of community shares from early 2010 and reviewing
scope to relax existing clawback conditions on publicly funded community assets. We will develop criteria on social assets
by Budget 2010, to determine whether alternative delivery structures such as cooperatives or third sector entities would offer
the greatest value for public assets. this will include looking at how civic organisations could be given new rights to access
unused spaces. We will financially support innovative programmes to bring services together with civic society. this includes
the young Foundation pilot programme to bring entrepreneurs into primary care trusts to stimulate innovation and strengthen
relationships between the local community and frontline public service professionals. this also includes supporting the ‘innovation
exchange’ in the next financial year to bring together third sector organisations with the most innovative ideas on tackling
social problems with local public service commissioners and investors. Also, building on recent young Foundation41 work on
civic society, we will explore further options to strengthen interaction between neighbourhood services and citizens.
Indicator(s):
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