Danny Kruger’s report lays out a Conservative vision for strengthening civil society in communities. He listened to a wide range of people and organisations in compiling the report, including ACEVO, and we are pleased to see a number of our recommendations reflected in it. These include unlocking the National Fund to support communities, using the £2bn of dormant assets to create a new permanent community endowment, improving the commissioning of services, and asking government to legislate for employers to give people time off for trustee work.
While we don’t align with everything suggested in the report, ACEVO is committed to working with Danny Kruger to build cross-party support for those objectives that will help the communities and causes our members serve. We will also continue to advocate for those organisations, for example international charities and large medical research charities, to whom the recommendations in the report may be less directly relevant.
To achieve our shared objectives, there will need to be broad political support, and in particular support from the government. Danny Kruger has a strong relationship with the prime minister, but the ambition in this document can only be realised with ministerial and broader cross-party backbench support. Without that there is a risk that this document, like the Civil Society Strategy, will get lost without its potential being realised.
