Voluntary groups face funding axe

Eleven organisations, including two schemes for providing home repairs and adaptations for elderly and disabled people, will lose all funding from NHS North Yorkshire and York as it plans to make cuts of more than £110,000 from voluntary sector budgets as part of a wider moves to make £25m savings by next March.

NHS managers launched a review into spending of more than £5m with voluntary groups across North Yorkshire in March, promising to protect services provided to the most vulnerable.

A report being considered by health chiefs tomorrow recommends that 11 groups – among them Citizens Advice Bureau, the Council for Voluntary Service Groups, the Red Cross, disablement action groups in Whitby and Scarborough and Thirsk Community Care Association, which provides holiday childcare for disabled children, should cease receiving funding from October, money instead being focused on priority areas.

Most, including services for the blind, deaf, stroke patients and most counselling services will suffer four per cent budget cuts in line with savings targets in the health service.

Many organisations providing “essential” services for the growing numbers of elderly and carers in the county, such as Age UK York and the Alzheimer’s Society, will keep their current funding levels but “will need to...make efficiencies in order to support the increasing demands on services”.

Two cancer support groups, those helping people with mental health problems and drug and alcohol services will see no cuts.

The chief executive of the North Yorkshire and York Forum for Voluntary Organisations, Kate Tayler, said: “We understand that public bodies are having to make very difficult cuts but these organisations are providing valuable services that are very much needed.

“We are aware the decisions are based on priorities. However, the organisations have had no notifications as yet as to which services will cease to be funded, and our primary concern is that the decisions are fully explained to the organisations affected.

“Voluntary and community organisations that need financial or other advice should contact their nearest support and development organisations.”

Cuts worth £250,000 to 18 groups were originally proposed nine months ago after the county’s health primary care trust (PCT) again plunged into financial difficulties. But they were reversed after an outcry, following a one-off cash injection from the strategic health authority (SHA).

Final figures reveal the PCT again required further extra cash totalling £5m from the SHA in 2010-11 on top of £12m received the previous year. It deferred further expenditure worth nearly £9m and achieved only £7m in recurrent savings on a budget worth more than £1.2bn.

A report by the district auditor Lynne Snowball said the PCT’s budget and savings plans were last year “unrealistic and inadequate” but emergency action to plug financial gap, which at one stage was predicted to hit nearly £30m, led to it meeting its financial targets for 2010-11 although “significant financial risks” remain over the organisation’s financial resilience.

A report to health chiefs about the changes to voluntary sector funding said decisions over the changes had been taken according to their impact on frontline services, whether the service reduces risk of hospitalisation or loss of independence and whether there was duplication of provision.