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  • Fairer Scotland Funding 2014/15

    Created: 17/01/2014
    News/Events Category: Funding and Finance


    Updated: 17 January 2014
    UPDATE – Fife Council have now expanded the remit of these guidelines to cover the full Fife Employability Pathway 2014 and we will be discussing these at the next Fife Employability Forum on 29th January. In the meantime FVA held a meeting on 13th January 2014 to gather feedback from service providers on the original document’s content. A copy of our response to Fife Council based on discussions at that meeting has been appended to the article below.

    As the old Chinese saying goes ‘may you live in interesting times’. And these certainly are.

    As some of you will be aware Fife Council had originally intended to publish Fairer Scotland Funding (FSF) commissioning guidelines back in early November with a view to inviting expressions of interest by the end of the year.

    In the interests of maximising investment the Council wish to use FSF as match funding for the European Programme 2014-20. It had been anticipated that the new EU Programme for Scotland 2014-2020 EU Programme for Scotland 2014-2020 would be available at the end of the year but significant delays in the timescale means that this will not now be available until February/March 2014 at the earliest. For this reason they plan to hold off publishing final guidelines until then.

    In the meantime, the partnership’s Executive Group has agreed that despite the delays to the publication of the EU Programme, the attached briefing paper will be released to the third sector to give an indication of the activities that are likely to be supported by Fairer Scotland Funding depending on the priorities to be supported through European Funding.

    FVA have spoken with the Council with regard to this paper. I think it is fair to say that whilst we think it represents a wonderful opportunity for coordination and third sector development there are also some areas around which we have concerns.

    As the third sector representative on the Opportunities Fife Partnership we would like to host a meeting to gather the views of third sector providers at 1pm on Monday 13th January (venue tbc depending on numbers). If you would like to attend please email [email protected]

    Alternatively, send us your comments by e-mail by Friday 10 January and we will feed them into the discussion.

    The next Fife Employability Forum on 29 January will be a week after the Opportunities Fife Partnership meeting. Come along to hear the latest and join in discussions on working in partnership. To book your place email Isabel Ritchie on [email protected]



    Fife Voluntary Action's response on the document:
    Fairer Scotland Funding
    Timeframes for allocating funding:
    As mentioned previously if FSF funding is not awarded by end March then a number of projects will lose staff, expertise and there will be an impact on client progressions and outcomes as a result. FVA is gathering data on the full extent of this to bring to the Opportunities Fife Partnership meeting on the 23rd of January.

    The intention to fund new services/consortia approaches not withstanding any closure of projects will create a delay in starting new ones as organisations need to go through the recruitment process again.

    Mainstreaming
    The document mentions mainstreaming in several places – it would be helpful to clarify exactly what is meant by this –where does Fife Council see the mainstream funding coming from?

    Length of funding commitment(p.5 point 6)
    We welcome the commitment at the outset of an award to FSF funding for three years in principle.

    Innovation:
    Might be a priority for FSF, but for a wider Pathway then funding should focus on delivery based on experience and good practice (of which there is a great deal out there).


    Commissioning Document:
    Gaps in provision:
    The document is currently unclear about what is being commissioned and what is work already being undertaken within Fife Council at the moment. E.g. page 5, point 1. The ‘employment in environmental projects’: is that open for application or already underway within Fife Council, ditto IT Skills for Work? And, as discussed previously, there is no mention of the work underway around exploring ‘hubs’ in SIMD areas.

    Is the commissioning document going to affect all services including those internal to Fife Council or just third sector provision?

    The SIMD focus is presumably just for FSF so if this is a document for the full pathway that needs to be reflected.

    Do these priority groups also tie-in with the ESF priorities? The pipeline needs to include reference as a gap group to lone parents and those with family/caring responsibilities who are currently under-served by provision. This is identified in FVA's mapping report and also picked up in the latest ESF consultation document (pages 11-12 and page 20).

    Bid Assessment Criteria (p. 5 point 4)
    The paper suggests that bids will be assessed on a simple costs per job outcome approach. It would be helpful to have a framework for analysis which would include a range of performance indicators (outputs and outcomes): e.g. client group covered, numbers progressing against key milestones, numbers jobs sustained at 6 months, quality of provision proposed, these could tie-in with ESF possibly also include community benefit clause?

    Payment Approach (p.5, point 5):
    If Opps Fife wants to use FSF for innovation and risk-taking then we strongly recommend not using a payment-by-job-outcomes approach as this will be counter-productive.

    If on the other hand job outcomes is the priority then we would recommend a model which combines an upfront payment with money then paid out on an outcomes basis. Payment milestones should tie-in with performance indicators outlined in the commissioning guidelines (see above).

    Performance reporting:
    All services should be assessed on progress against agreed indicators – with an option to remove or reallocate funding if they aren’t met.

    Information on available resources:
    We know we aren’t in a position to do this for ESF yet but any indication of the amount of FSF money allocated to each service gap would be helpful, and certainly will be essential by the time we get to this being a full document.

    Timeframes:
    We need an indication on timeframes for developing and finalising the pathway and the commissioning approach.

    Finally, it is recognised that in terms of strategic developments and capacity building third sector providers of employability services in Fife have been largely left to their own devices. Any involvement in for example attending strategic meetings, informing policy etc is done from within highly restricted budgets which are normally only allocated to delivery of outcomes.

    Downloads:
    Briefing Paper (428KB) PDF




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