Volunteer Centre West Berkshire is organising an online training session on 16^th March about HR fundamentals for charities.

Charities are employers and so are subject to the same laws as everyone else. But charities can also be different from regular employers in that money is generally tighter, there can be volunteer workers and often there is no HR professional on board.

OUTCOMES

The training is designed to point you to the really important HR stuff you need as a charity – staff training and a knowledge of the rights of employees and volunteers, including employment contracts and handbooks and HR systems.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Charities who feel they would benefit from a better understanding of their organisation’s management system. Existing charities and new charities who need a refresher session.

ABOUT THE TRAINER

Simon Fenton, is Fenton Elliott solicitors’ founder and Managing Partner. He has degrees in Law from Cardiff University, Management Science from Aston University Business School and a post-graduate qualification from De Montfort University. He qualified as a solicitor with a leading London City firm in 1993.

You will be sent a Zoom link after booking.

To book (contribution £12), visit https://voluntarysectortrainingalliance.org.uk/home/about/

Volunteer Centre West Berkshire

Charitable Incorporated Organisation No 1156302

Broadway House

4-8 The Broadway

Northbrook Street

Newbury RG14 1BA

01635 49004

http://www.volunteerwestberks.org.uk/

Ciizens Advice has recently published their Gaps in the Network report on the impact of rising numbers of outreaches and temporary closures on post office access.

The post office network continues to provide vital access to essential face-to-face services at a time when many other providers are deserting the high street and moving to online only.

Their latest research shows

• Nearly 1 in 5 (18%) people visit a post office every week, while nearly half (45%) visit at least once a month
• But across Britain almost 1,300 post offices are temporarily closed
• 1 in 3 rural post offices are now part-time outreach services, open for an average of only 5.5 hours a week
• The report confirms that increasing temporary post office closures and part-time outreaches make it significantly harder for people and small businesses to access services.

When post offices close people are forced to take on the additional costs and inconvenience of travelling further – something that can be particularly challenging in rural areas and for those who face barriers to travelling long distances.

And although for some people outreaches may be better than nothing, many find the service inadequate. Provision is too infrequent, opening hours inconvenient, queues too long, and vital services missing.

Urgent action is needed to reverse this trend to ensure that the post office network really is convenient and easily accessible to everyone. Citizens Advice will continue to work with stakeholders to develop workable solutions and push for their implementation.

Click on link to view a really good video highlighting the current struggle some rural communities are experincing when their post office closes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I0b9BwVJyPUlUpi2GHB9XgQreee_7Twi/view

by Phillip Vincent, Action with Communities in Rural England

National charity, Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) says the government must fully consider how it’s plans for levelling up will address disadvantage faced by rural communities.

Today, the government announced cursory details of its centre-piece policy commitment to levelling-up. But ACRE says that far from instilling confidence, the white paper leaves more questions than it answers.

Jeremy Leggett, ACRE’s Policy Adviser said: “It is not clear whether the government’s 12 missions of levelling-up will counter the long-standing disadvantages faced by rural communities.

Whilst we await further details, we have questions about whether the policy proposals will be subject to a comprehensive rural proofing exercise and if additional resources and investment will be made available to non-metropolitan areas in the remaining term of this administration.

We are particularly concerned the government appears to have watered down its 2019 election commitment to achieve 100% coverage of high-quality broadband by 2025. This would represent a levelling-down, not levelling-up for rural communities”.

ACRE represents a network of 38 member organisations that work in support of rural communities in every county of England. Its members know full well that many people living in rural areas face multiple disadvantages, often obscured by a bucolic imagination of the countryside and official statistics on deprivation that do not account for geographically dispersed poverty. Rural communities suffer from poor infrastructure, limited access to services and affordability of housing compounded by a lack of job opportunities.

The rural charity will be providing further commentary on the government plans for levelling up once full details of the white paper are known. Along with rural proofing, it will be hoping there are genuine commitments to subsidiarity of decision making, community involvement, and a fair distribution of resources and investment to rural communities.