'Big society' suffers setback in showcase Liverpool - The Guardian

Liverpool city council leader Joe Anderson said the need to make £141m of savings had put hundreds of voluntary groups in the city at risk. Photograph: PA

David Cameron's vision of a community-driven renaissance of the inner cities suffered an embarrassment today after Liverpool, a key partner in one of his project's four "big society" showcase areas, said it was pulling out of the initiative because of government-imposed spending cuts.

Liverpool city council leader Joe Anderson said the need to make £141m of savings over the next two years had put the future of hundreds of voluntary groups in the city at risk.

The announcement follows a warning yesterday by the head of Liverpool's big society "vanguard", Phil Redmond that Cameron's initiative had ground to a halt in the city because decision-making had been "subsumed by the cuts".

The Labour-led city council was not a formal partner in the big society "vanguard" project launched by the prime minister on Merseyside last July, but says it was co-opted onto a "parallel vanguard" some months later and had put "significant resources" into a "substantial programme of activity".

In a letter to communities secretary Eric Pickles, councillor Anderson writes: "When we agreed to become a Vanguard, your government promised to work with us to remove some of the problems and blockages that were preventing us from successfully delivering our Big Society programme. I have to say, the government has failed to deliver a single change that we have requested, which has severely hampered many parts of our programme."

The council learned in December that it would lose £100m in specialist grants from the government, many of which were allocated to charities and community groups tackling welfare issues, from worklessness to family breakdown.

Anderson adds: "How can the City Council support the Big Society and its aim to help communities do more for themselves when we will have to cut the lifeline to hundreds of these vital and worthwhile groups?"

In a statement, the Department for Communities and local government said: "The initial four vanguard areas have been invaluable training grounds and have demonstrated where barriers, both cultural and practical, should be removed through deregulation, direct support or measures in the Localism Bill."

Redmond said today in a statement that his criticisms of big society in Liverpool, made in an interview with Local Government Chronicle, had not intended to be seen as a denigration of Cameron's vision: "I remain a strong supporter of the principle behind Big Society – even if the marketing slogan is not the best!".

Meanwhile the government's big society advisor Lord Wei today sought to clarify reports that he had scaled back his unpaid involvement in the project because he needed more time to devote to paid work and having "a life".

In his blog he wrote: "At different times in life one will have more or less time. At the moment, alongside my work in the Lords, serving the Chinese, faith, and other communities as a peer, my family, and earning a living, I have slightly less time than I did last year.

"Thankfully the structures in government are now in place to harness my time better so I do not have to put in the long hours over and above the two days a week I agreed with the government in June 2010. I put in extra time when I first started, which impacted on family life and finances. My duty must be to my family first, then the communities of which I am a part, as well as to the country."

He said he was not "superhuman" and only "a humble advisor": "There is something quite un-Big Society in thinking one person alone at the centre of government can magic it into being. I have learnt that I am a small cog in a big machine," he said.