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It's one year on since the prime minister gave his first major speech in office on the Big Society. Sir Stephen Bubb is chief executive of the Association of Chief Executive of Voluntary Organisations David Cameron's push for more voluntary and community action has been what he describes as his ‘passion', and, as he repeated this week, he means for it to be his defining legacy. ACEVO has always supported the principles behind a ‘bigger society', while being clear that the agenda must not be lost to disjointed implementation or cloudy rhetoric. If it is to win broad support, the Government needs to show what its vision will mean in practice – laying out concrete, coherent proposals for how Big Society can be achieved across very different communities. It was against this backdrop that ACEVO established the Commission on Big Society, a cross-party grouping of MPs, peers, and charity leaders. Its final report, released last week, urged the Government to fill in the blanks on Big Society and also called for a sea change in the way that business approaches the Big Society agenda. In particular, banks, with a recommendation that UK banks commit a minimum of 1% of pre-tax profits to charities. Polling by YouGov on behalf of the Commission told an unsurprising story – just 13% of people think the Government has made clear what Big Society is, while 60% doubt that it can work in deprived communities. It shows too the strength of public feeling on local government cuts to voluntary organisations, with seven in 10 saying they support intervention to stop disproportionate cuts to the sector. With the Giving White Paper launched this week, these findings are all the more important. Welcome as the Government's proposals to boost personal and corporate philanthropy are, the Big Society agenda needs to press on every front. This is why the commission called for new rights to request time off for volunteering – which the polling found could unleash far more voluntary action than a proposed Big Society bank holiday – while, at the same time, urging greater transparency in local government spending, consideration of community empowerment in local commissioning, and statutory guidance to prevent disproportionate cuts. These gaps in the Big Society agenda need to be taken seriously – to meet its own ambitions, the Government needs a plan which addresses the full range of barriers to social action, and that works for every corner of the country.

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Inside View

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