Voluntary & Community Sector Assembly

Back at Voluntary Action Leicester (VAL) after lunch, for another last meeting. This time it's the final meeting of the Steering Group for the Voluntary & Community Sector Assembly. This is another group whose early meetings I'd attended (on behalf of REDP), then been unable to do so for the past several months. In that time, the Steering Group has appealed for nominations for election to VCS Assembly Board, then arranged for elections to that Board take place and for those elected to vote for their own officers. The Board of the Voluntary and Community Sector Assembly is made up of representatives from the following bodies:

• Apex
• The Bridge
• CrossRoads Care
• Diversity Hub
• Focus
• Futures Unlocked
• Groundwork Leicester & Leicestershire
• Leicestershire Aids Support SErvice
• MRC Community Action
• RCC Leicestershire & Rutland
• Voluntary Action LeicesterShire
• Voluntary Action South Leicestershire

In the earlier meetings I attended, my continual refrain was that this Assembly should take care not to duplicate or shadow the operations of Leicester Partnership's Host Organisations for the various Communities of Interest, or their appointed representatives. I must have sounded like a one-note piano, I I spoke about this so often. Well, here we are, several months down the road: the VCS Assembly is a reality and Leicester Partnership's Host Organisation system is about to pass into memory.

Those bodies which had been serving as the Host Organisations never made a deliberate, minuted decision to stand aside from nomination and election for the VCS Assembly, but we all had our own business to get on with. The process went ahead and we weren't really able to get involved, but we were glad to see the work being shared out among the many competent and capable organisations in the city and county.

Now the VCS Assembly is the only game in town (and county) and those seven organisations who came to the fore as the most capable bodies to represent the various "protected characteristics" (as identified in legislation) find themselves distant far from the centre of this work. The VCS Assembly did not deliberately set out to represent the various "equality strands" or "protected characteristics" as Leicester Partnership did, with its designation of Communities of Interest and Host Organisations. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we got a small amount of funding over two years for the work we did. The organisations represented on the board of the VCS Assembly are not getting any such remuneration for their work.

Certainly, those around the table don't seem at all bothered about this - and that's probably quite right too. I'm sure that the organisations elected to the VCS Assembly Board (and the individuals carrying out those responsibilities on behalf of their groups) can represent the Voluntary and Community Sector in city and county perfectly well. I hope that the rest of us can take our place in supporting them.