Harrogate Chamber Hustings : Your Questions Answered
How Will You Support The Voluntary Sector?
In preparation for the General Election to be held in less than 2 weeks, we hosted a Hustings of our own with 6 of the 7 candidates standing in the Harrogate & District constituency in attendance. This week we will reflect on the questions asked and the answers given.
Frances Elliot, CEO of Harrogate and District Community Action asked:
Over 10% of Harrogate Chamber members are companies in the not-for-profit sector. How do you plan to support the local voluntary sector in the face of increased demand for many services?
Andrew Jones (Conservative):
We are blessed with an astonishing range and quality of different community groups within our area. They are extremely strong, so I ask how can we make them stronger? I think they add real value but lack a bit of support, particularly from volunteers. So, we need to do more to encourage volunteering. We also need to make sure that if they are applying for grants, we make that grant application process significantly easier. We also need to encourage businesses to recognise that they can work with community groups, and that improves both parties and the whole of our society.
Shan Oakes (Green):
Our community groups are fantastic and there’s a lot of volunteers who are up to here trying to plug the holes that are left by government - inaction, neglect, irresponsibility regarding care particularly of people and the environment. I hope the new government, however it’s configured is going to really look at that and put the funding where it should be.
John Swales (Reform):
Essentially, I would agree with Andrew Jones. We have got a lot of volunteer groups in Harrogate, and they are all competing for time and resources and money, and I think the challenge they face is cutting through to people. What are they doing to make people aware of the services they provide, their need for volunteers, et cetera? I know everyone’s got limited budgets, but there are creative ways that you can communicate with people. It’s not always a question of more money, because you can do a lot with not a lot!
Conrad Whitcroft (Labour):
We know that the voluntary sector increasingly is simply filling in the gaps left by the Conservative government’s failure. What used to be a supplementary service or last line of defence potentially has now become the frontline service endlessly. Volunteer organisations are having to do more and more with less and less. We need to have the proper infrastructure and plan in place so that we have less people falling through the gaps that mean that we end up with issues like homelessness or the issues that lead to food banks needing to be a necessity rather than an emergency. I think Labour’s got the plan to do that with Great British Energy, lowering peoples’ energy bills. We also need to crack on with building more homes, with rent prices and mortgage costs through the roof which has led to people having less money for fundamentals. We pledge to build 1.5 million new homes.
Tom Gordon (Lib Dem):
My background is in health services research, and I currently work for a charity - not local but national. We’ve seen massive issues in securing funding after a pandemic where lots of charities lost lots of money and couldn’t get revenue coming in. The charity and voluntary sector underpin a lot of peoples’ wellbeing in this country, which is a shame. There are a few different things that if elected MP that I would want to do. One of the tools MPs have access to is a parliamentary piece of software called Finder which can help find funding opportunities. So being able to be effective on day one and utilise those tools in parliament will help make sure we get the support the voluntary sector needs. I really appreciate my employer who gives me time off to volunteer, and I think we should bang the drum for employers who do that. We know volunteering can add so much to our community and we should be encouraging schemes like that. Fundamentally, many charities are providing a service that at one point the state or council provided; this comes back to the impact of cuts of local government services. Reversing that with funding for local government is going to be key.
Paul Haslam (Independent):
This sector is worth about 3 billion pounds a year to our local economy; that makes it a similar size to tourism. My starting point would be for the combined authority to look at this because it’s such an important sector. But I wish it wasn’t as important as it is, and I wish there was more money around. I’m incensed that people are paying too much council tax in this part of the world. I'm incensed that we are not getting the right amount of what's called the fairer funding formula, which has been going on since 2017. To give you an example on transport, we get a sixth of the funding per head compared with the southeast. That’s outrageous; it should at least be parity because the distances here are such more and the population density in the south is much higher. And then schools, we get the 143rd amount of money if you rank all the councils per pupil. We need to level up; that would give people more money. Finally, we need about 10,000 affordable homes, but what we need to be doing is looking at why we fail to deliver that in this area. They also need to be affordable to run.
There’s a lot we can do to help people, but I would go back to the fact that the MP should be part of the local convening, bringing people together, not interfering in planning. Whoever gets in, we need to make a lot of noise to get that fairer formula sorted.
We would like to thank all candidates for participating in a lively and engaging discussion, and all those who asked such pertinent questions.
Thanks also to John Plummer for facilitating the meeting and Pavilions of Harrogate for hosting.
Written by Zach Greaves - Chamber Press Secretary
