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From
the May 2001 Issue Contents: MAIN
STORY
A
new Whitehall unit may bring Lottery funders closer into line with
government initiatives. Alex Klaushofer and Jane Taylor report A
new cross-cutting government body is to examine ways of integrating
lottery applications with other sources of funding for regeneration
programmes in deprived areas. The
Regional Co-ordination Unit, officially launched on April 1, is central
government's latest attempt to produce a more coherent approach to local
and regional initiatives of the sort that many lottery-funded
organisations are involved in. The RCU's director-general, Rob Smith,
told Lottery Monitor: "It is very important to ensure that lottery
funds go where they are most needed and that they are allocated in an
efficient and co-ordinated way." The
RCU is located within the Department of the Environment, Transport and
the Regions, but reports to the Cabinet Office minister Charles
Falconer. Since April 1 it has become the new head office for the
English Government Offices in the Regions (GORs). The
new unit will simplify the relationships between the emerging GORs and
multiple parent central government departments. But it is also charged
with tackling "initiativitis": the uncontrolled overlap or
duplication of effort by locally based agencies who are simply unaware
of what other bodies nearby are doing. The RCU will in future have to
approve all "area-based initiatives" (ABIs). The
definition of an ABI is broad, but among the examples already defined by
the RCU are Health, Education and Sport Action Zones, the Spaces for
Sport and Arts programme and the Healthy Living Centres initiative. This
puts lottery funding squarely under the gaze of the unit. New
Opportunities Fund staff are working closely with the RCU, as Stephen
Dunmore, NOF's chief executive, explained to Lottery Monitor's
south-west regional conference last month. Officials
in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport have also been meeting
with the RCU. Among the issues they are jointly considering are:
A
DCMS insider emphasised that the department did not want lottery boards
to get caught up in a raft of new requirements, saying: "This is
about keeping the RCU informed, which makes sense. It has no formal role
to tell the distributors what to do in the way it might with government
funds. In fact the lottery boards are ahead of the game in terms of
co-ordination, best practice and so on."
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