Newham Partnership Board
It is difficult to know what can be reported on the LSP. You may be aware that a review took place and since August, there have been no elected representatives from the Voluntary, Community or Faith sectors on the newly formed Newham Partnership Board (NPB).
NVSC continues to facilitate the involvement of the elected representative on 4 of the 6 Local Area Partnership Board’s (LAPB’s).
NVSC understands that a meeting took place in December to discuss this issue but, if there were any decisions made, it has not been communicated to the sector. It is implicit in the guidelines issued by the Government that LSP’s should be made up of key stakeholders. The review carried out last year was also very clear that key to the development of the new structure was the involvement of the Third Sector. In fact the continuing failure to build a better relationship with the Third Sector, and their continued absence from the NPB will not assist the Council when the Comprehensive Area Assessment is introduced next year.
The issue still remains that the sector do not consider it appropriate for the Chair of the NPB to select who he thinks should represent the sector. NVSC have no problem if he selects his two organisations but they will not be seen by either the sectors or Government Office for London (GOL) as representing the sector. The sensible thing to do would be to do both – have the two selected organisations but also allow the sectors to elect their three representatives. Those representatives would have a mandate to speak on behalf of the sectors they were elected to represent answerable to the sector, leaving the selected two organisations to continue to be free to speak only on behalf of their own organisations.
