Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprise (VCSE) Sector Advisory Group

Lancaster City Council has launched an advisory group for the local Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector and would like you to get involved.

You can view the first VCSE Advisory Group meeting here.

At our most recent meeting last September, we covered how we can support one another through partnership working. Presentations were from:

Guy Christiansen, Chief Executive of Lancashire Youth Challenge, will showed a slideshow about their current partnership project – The Morecambe Bay Youth Triathlon – which was followed by a short film of Guy and Robyn Thomas (Manager, Stanleys Community Centre) discussing their approach to partnership work.

David F. Murphy (Associate Professor of Sustainability & Collaborative Leadership, Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership, University of Cumbria, Lancaster) and Joanna Stanberry (Postgraduate Researcher, Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS), University of Cumbria, Lancaster & Ambleside) ran a workshop on multi-actor partnership working in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This included sharing findings from a recent action research project, including a study on 'Competencies for Local Collaborating' in the Lancaster District.

The group's particularly keen to hear your views and gain from your experience of the VCSE sector across the Lancaster district. Your thoughts are crucial in helping us shape and develop our thinking, which will improve how the council works with VCSE organisations in the future.

Let us know your thoughts below.

What is the purpose of the VCSE?

Chaired by Councillor Caroline Jackson, leader of Lancaster City Council, the overall goal of the advisory group is to consider how the council can effectively support, alongside other local partners, the work of local VCSE organisations.

The group will be responsible for determining its approach and activities, but it is envisaged that these will include:

1. Engaging with both council funded organisations as well as other organisations within the VCSE sector.

2. Deliberation on how the council can support local organisations toward achieving their maximum impact around shared objectives, aligned to the council’s 2030 priorities.

3. Consideration of how the council’s financial and non-financial resources can be used to enable point 2) above.

4. Engagement with other local ‘anchor’ organisations across public, private and community sectors to consider how a partnership approach could increase the level of support available locally.

5. Formulation of principles for the design of a long-term scheme to support partner organisations in a coordinated, consistent way.