A number of stakeholders interviewed for Jo Durning’s report on the future of the hubs have criticised the work of the ICT hub. Mark Parker, network development manager at Bassac, said the ICT hub appeared ‘distant and isolated from the community it serves, driven by supplier rather than customer focus’.

Ian Saxton, chair of Wokingham ChangeUp Consortium, said that the ICT hub held a conference for the South East in July which was ‘useless’. ‘It is not offering anything which is not already available. The deals it has negotiated on software duplicate what was already available through NCVO or NAVCA, indeed charities can often get free materials from IT companies (though not anything useful from Microsoft) simply by ringing up and asking.’

Matt Legg, NE region ICT coordinator/champion said that he considered the impact of the ICT hub on his work so far to have been limited, and generally unsupportive. He was not clear exactly who the hub partners are, and found it difficult to disentangle what the hub was doing from the other activities of its partner organisations.

However, David Edwards of WCIT, a founder member of the ICT hub partnership, said that on the evidence so far the ICT hub was very worthwhile and should continue. ‘There should be regular reviews, with a fundamental review in two or three years time. The hub should have had a significant impact by then.’ He felt that none of the other options being canvassed in the sector for delivery of national services had obvious attractions compared to the hubs. ‘A central commissioning model would be likely to create silos and fragmentation, with no partnerships to pull together the work programmes.’

Edwards also claimed that the development of the ICT hub was not helped by several changes of personnel in the Home Office which led to some inconsistencies, as well as stop start decision making processes.