Cabinet Office Third Sector

Public services background

The Government’s plans for public service reform offer real opportunities for the third sector to get involved in delivering high quality, tailored public services.

The third sector can:

• help to design services
• give a voice to service users
• help the public sector to deliver more effectively and innovatively
• deliver certain services directly 

The Government is working towards achieving a fairer playing field so third sector organisations can win the contracts they are best placed to deliver, where this will improve outcomes for people. The aim is to make it easier for third sector organisations with the ambition to design, deliver and improve public services to work with local and central government.

However, we don’t want to limit the sector to just delivering services – third sector organisations of all sizes also have a crucial role in ensuring public services are held to account and improved. 

A number of reports have identified the barriers to the third sector’s involvement in the delivery of public services, including:

• the Treasury’s cross-cutting reviews on the voluntary and community sector [external website]
• the acevo report on surer funding [external website]
• the National Audit Office’s report on working with the third sector [external website]

The reports identified a number of barriers, including insecurity and administrative burdens, and limited access to financial, physical and human capital.

In response to these earlier reports, and to ensure that the third sector is able to deliver services where it is best placed to do so and work successfully with the public sector, the Government published Partnership in public services: an action plan for third sector involvement in December 2006.

• More details of the public service delivery action plan