Big society tsar Lord Wei 'doesn't have enough time to perform role'

[Magda Hassan]

Phil Redmond disenchanted by 'big society' progress in Liverpool

Scheme's champion says vision to showcase volunteering and cultural activities in the city has been 'subsumed by the cuts'

• Patrick Butler
  
• The Guardian, Thursday 3 February 2011 Phil Redmond has expressed frustration of the slow progress of the 'big society' in Liverpool. Photograph: Brian Rasic / Rex Features The prime minister's "big society" vision has ground to a halt in the city where it was launched, after being overwhelmed by local spending cuts, according to Phil Redmond, the TV producer appointed to champion the project.
  Redmond, creator of the TV soap Brookside, took charge of the official "vanguard" scheme in Liverpool last year at the behest of David Cameron. The project, one of four across England, was intended to showcase volunteering and cultural activities in the city. But Redmond says in a interview published today that the big society has been "subsumed by the cuts" and little progress has been made locally.
  He tells the Local Government Chronicle magazine: "I went along with it all because I thought it would be a good way of getting things going, but it's been impossible to get any traction because of the cuts everyone is dealing with post spending review trauma."
  His comments follow reports that the prime minister's office is concerned the big society policy is losing direction. Last week one of the idea's architects, Respublica thinktank director Philip Blond, warned of the effect on it of the drive for cuts. Charities have warned that nationally thousands of voluntary organisations could go bust as a result of cuts to council funding.
  The project was put together hurriedly, says Redmond, with its substance worked out only after the prime minister had announced it at the big society launch in the city in July. Its main achievement to date had been to connect "the People's Republic of Liverpool with Tory HQ".
  "A Tory PM comes to Liverpool and says we've got this great idea to get everyone more involved. I'm not going to talk that down it is and remains a good idea. The problem is two days later everyone defaults back to their normal setting.
  "They've been in too much of a hurry. It's all about 'we want to change the world', not 'how do you want us to change the world?'. They turn up wanting to have a big conversation but it turns into a big lecture - telling us this is what you do and this is how you do it. We don't need that."
  In the interview he is highly critical of the government's plans to impose its own 5,000 community organisers into communities across England and says he would have preferred to work with the existing community sector in Liverpool. "We've already got community organisers; they may not fit their model they've got from America, but they're here. We need to facilitate what's there already. [The Big Society agenda] is a bit like ballroom dancing millions are already doing it but it's under the radar because everyone's focused on Strictly [Come Dancing]".
  The city council said last week that up to 500 charity workers would lose their jobs over the next two years as a knock on effect of proposed £141m cuts to the town hall budget.
  Redmond said he wanted National Museums Liverpool, which he chairs, and Mersey fire and rescue service to be at the centre of the local big society strategy. But the former faces cuts of 15%, while the latter could be forced to lay off one in 10 firefighters to make up an £8.5m funding shortfall.
  The other three big society vanguard projects announced by Cameron last year are in Windsor and Maidenhead, Eden Valley in Cumbria, and Sutton in south London.
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/...-liverpool