Andy Cook: To fix broken Britain, we need to unleash the people who ‘just do things’

Andy Cook is Chief Executive of the Centre for Social Justice.

A few weeks ago, a small group of volunteers took it upon themselves to scrub graffiti from trains and platforms on the London Underground. Innocuous enough, you might think.

But there was something powerful in it. They didn’t apply for a grant; they didn’t moan to the council. They just saw something wrong and set about putting it right.

The video of course went viral, and hats off to them. But it struck me that across the country, there are thousands of people like this – individuals and community groups who wake up each day and quietly get on with fixing the problems in front of them, though without the social media hits or recognition.

Britain’s small charity sector is vast: over 160,000 organisations, the majority of them with incomes under £100,000 a year. Collectively they contribute billions to the economy and deliver essential services in every part of the country, from youth mentoring to addiction recovery.

These are the social entrepreneurs who don’t wait for permission to get things done. And I believe they are exactly the kind of people Britain needs more of.

Three in four people now say that “Britain is broken”. There are the obvious signs, like the rising number of people out of work and our surging welfare bill. But beneath the surface, what we hear about in our research at the Centre for Social Justice is the slow erosion of the social fabric, of local pride, of the basic belief that life can get better.

One in five children are persistently absent from school. Knife crime is up by 50 per cent in a decade. Rates of loneliness are rising fastest among young people. Addiction, family breakdown, gang exploitation – these problems don’t exist in isolation, and yet all of them are getting worse.

It would be easy to pin all this on politicians. But the truth is, government cannot fix these problems on its own. Nor should it try to. The institutions most capable of turning lives around are not in Whitehall; they are found in church halls, boxing clubs, family-run businesses, and tiny charities you’ve never heard of, working with little glory and even less money. The people who “just do things”.

That’s why I am struck by the Chancellor’s new £500 million Better Futures Fund – not because of the size of the pot, but because the principles behind the scheme targeted at 200,000 of Britain’s most vulnerable children. By seeking to match fund £500 million of taxpayers’ money with private philanthropy and social investment (a model, incidentally, pioneered by previous Tory ministers) it has the potential for every pound to go much further than the usual big government schemes.

But this will only happen if ministers resist the gravitational pull of big players and familiar names. Social Impact Bonds – the Chancellor’s chosen vehicle chosen for this – carry some risk of locking-out smaller providers. The real potential lies with the small and often overlooked organisations already doing the hard work in local areas.

In our own work at the CSJ, we’ve highlighted dozens of examples where this guerilla army is mending the social fabric of our nation. The Recruitment Junction in Newcastle has reduced reoffending among prison leavers to just two per cent, compared to national rates of 55 per cent. How? By giving them real work and responsibility. St Ed’s in Norwich give children vocational training and a proven route to work in vital trades like building, mechanics, and hospitality – all sectors struggling to recruit.

Although not household names, these charities and their leaders produce results the state can’t begin to replicate. And yet too often we make life even harder for these amazing people to do what they do best. They’re locked out of funding by red tape, or boxed out of bids by requirements tailored to national charities. When they do get a look in, resources are short-term or overly prescriptive. It remains the case that more than 80 per cent of charitable income goes to just four per cent of all charities.

Shadow ministers should enlist these local change-makers in the Conservative Party’s process of renewal – in candidate selection, in policy design, and in its message to the country. Because backing small charities reflects a deeper set of values: of living within our means, self-reliance and civic responsibility.

This is not about proposing Big Society 2.0. But the challenge of Broken Britain will not be solved by another national strategy or a new Whitehall taskforce. And in a world where, to paraphrase the OBR, the fiscal dashboard is flashing bright red and there is no headroom left, empowering the “little platoons” will have to be part of the answer.

If the Conservative Party wants to offer a serious answer to the challenges facing the country, it should champion the people who quietly live out its values – responsibility, enterprise, and community. These local heroes aren’t looking for handouts or headlines. Backing them is where any credible plan for fixing Broken Britain must start.