Kirsty Weakley asseses the National Audit Office report into the National Citizen Service.
Last week the National Audit Office (NAO) published a pretty critical report into the value for money of the government’s flagship programme, the National Citizen Service (NCS). But it would have been hard to tell from the tone of debate during the second reading of the National Citizen Service Bill in the House of Commons this week.
If the government does not address concerns, and respond to early warning signs, it risks being accused of squandering public money on a far greater scale than it did over Kids Company further down the line.
What was the NAO looking at?
NAO was charged with assessing the “value for money” of the scheme. NCS has become a central part of government policy and the Prime Minister recently reaffirmed that it is a key part of the shared society initiative.
So far the Office for Civil Society (OCS) has pumped millions of pounds into the scheme and by 2020 it plans to spend around £400m a year supporting it.
Increasing participation rates and high satisfaction from the young people who have taken part mean the scheme is frequently cited as an example of success for the government.
In 2013 a community interest company, the NCS Trust, was set up to coordinate the programme in England. It receives a large grant from the OCS and then contracts providers, a mix of charities and private companies, to run the scheme using a payment-by-results model.
The bill and royal charter seek to put the NCS Trust statutory footing and make it accountable to Parliament.
What did the NAO find?
According to the NAO report, not only was the scheme struggling to attract the targeted number of participants, but if by some stretch it does meet participation targets, it won’t have enough money to pay for them, unless it reduces the cost per head.
Currently NCS is costing around £1,800 per participant, £300 more than the NCS Trust had expected, and the NAO said this needed to fall to £1,300 for the scheme to be sustainable.
It’s safe to say the NAO is concerned about the lack of focus on controlling costs to date, and drew attention to how much time in board meetings was dedicated to costs.
It said its analysis of board meeting notes between January 2015 and March 2016 showed that time spent discussing growing participation was high, while controlling costs was low. NAO does report that the trust plans to focus more on controlling costs in the future.
Target-driven culture
The NAO report also revealed the extent of the target driven culture that had emerged and the effect this was having on both the NCS Trust and providers.
Could an obsession with increasing participation rates be doing more harm than good?
NAO highlighted concerns from providers and the NCS Trust, say they had "told us that the focus on targets, and not meeting these targets, had a negative impact on staff morale, market interest and public perceptions of the programme”.
It also highlighted that running shorter programmes in the spring and autumn meant there was little time to evaluate and adapt.
NAO also said the payment-by-results contracts could stifle innovation as contracts “do not explicitly encourage them [providers] to innovate or meet all the NCS societal aims”.
Last year alone the trust spent £10m on places that were not used. It is trying to recover these costs but surely it would have been better if it had never paid out the money in the first place.
The NCS Trust also told the NAO that it may not have spent so much money on a television advertising campaign had it not been for the pressures of participation targets.
Where is the scrutiny?
Is the OCS and the NCS Trust taking the report seriously? It’s hard to tell. Neither has given much away, in terms of action they might take, since the report was published.
Karen Bradley, who is Secretary of State for Culture and Sport and has overall responsibility for civil society, said during the second reading of the bill on Monday that she welcomed the report. She said: "It is important, with any programme of this type, that we understand value for money and what is being achieved. I am sure that my honorable friend will recognise that this was a very ambitious target. We have had great success in getting towards that target, but there is still more to do.”
Meanwhile the NCS Trust’s chief executive promised to continue work with the OCS.
There was barely a discussion about the report during the House of Commons debate for the second reading of the bill. MPs preferred to wax lyrical about the NCS success stories in their constituencies, rather than to hold the government to account.
What should it do?
NAO recommends that “both OCS and the trust need to consolidate learning, understand what is possible and begin to build a mature programme.”
I agree. But at present it doesn’t appear that this is happening – I hope I am wrong.
The NAO has highlighted that the government appears to have dropped plans to make NCS ‘opt-out’ rather than ‘opt-in’ by removing a proposed requirement for schools to promote the scheme. This should open the door to reset the targets, which were made when they had expected that schools would be told to do more.
If the OCS and the NCS Trust do not take the concerns outlined in the report seriously and rethink participation targets to make them more realistic, then they both run the risk of being accused of squandering billions public money in a few years’ time.
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