Community Fund approves merger

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In the wake of the Community Fund board’s formal agreement at its meeting on 20 May, the merger with NOF is going ahead with some speed. In an interview with Lottery Monitor (page 6) this month, NOF’s chair, Jill Pitkeathley, notes that the Community Fund has to vacate its central London headquarters by the end of 2004, when it will relocate to the NOF headquarters building. She says: ‘We expect to be operating in the closest possible way by then – or possibly before.’ Two key joint working groups will steer the merger: an officers’ group and a joint boards sub-committee; both have already convened their first meetings. Steven Burkeman, a senior Community Fund board member and former public opponent of merger, is one of the CF’s nominees on the joint steering group. Commenting on the board’s unanimous decision to accept merger, he said: ‘We all felt that we’d got as far as we were likely to get with the Secretary of State; she had gone a long way towards giving the guarantees we were after. ‘There is also an imperative to do with the viability of the Community Fund as a stand-alone organisation in the light of falling lottery receipts, which I find ultimately persuasive. It’s very difficult to see that we could go on on our own.’ Burkeman said his main concern now was how to ensure that the guarantees the Secretary of State had given the Community Fund were enshrined in law and the culture of the new body. 

The speed of the timescale means that an ‘administrative merger’ could be complete before the bill setting up the new body is introduced to parliament (see box). But just what this means is less clear. The DCMS is taking legal advice, but accepts that the degree of merged functioning ahead of legislation will depend very largely on goodwill and agreement between the two bodies themselves. The DCMS also confirms that the existing funding streams (CF and NOF) will have to remain separate until legislation, although current rules would allow for specific joint ‘delegated’ programmes. The Community Fund’s head of policy, Gerald Oppenheim, accepts that the merger of ‘back office’ functions, such as IT, HR, accommodation and financial administration, can go ahead, but says: ‘If you go further in terms of joint decision making, joint senior staffing and so on, that is very much affected by decisions of board members and what the law might allow you to do. It’s a question of parliamentary process: you can’t appoint a shadow board or chief executive until the legislation has had a second reading.’