“We are moving from a moment to a movement,” says National Citizen Service (NCS) Trust chief executive Mark Gifford, as he sets out his vision for the future of the youth social action initiative created by former Prime Minister David Cameron more than a decade ago.
Blighted by recent controversy over claims Cameron heavily influenced Treasury funding decisions for the NCS as well as a multi-million pound legal battle over the collapse of former contract-holders The Challenge, Gifford accepts he did not take on the easiest job when he joined the organisation in January 2020 – just months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
“There are criticisms that we are facing, but I think the NCS for the next decade will be different,” says Gifford.
While he describes the organisational aims of creating “confident, caring citizens” and helping social mobility, social cohesion and active citizenship as still “spot on”, he says that the trust needs to be “more agile” in how it works.
Gifford tells CYP Now about his plans to cut costs and reduce the amount of funding the NCS bids for at the next Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) and introduce a year-round offer targeting more children from disadvantaged backgrounds, while boosting collaboration with the youth sector.
Legacy departure
“We are on a transformed agenda to build on the great impact of the organisation and move away from some of the legacy stuff,” Gifford says, hinting at plans to move the organisation away from being recognised as Cameron's “pet project”.
While admitting the former Prime Minister has been “very generous” in offering him advice alongside patrons Lord Adonis and Lord Blunkett, he insists “advice and guidance is great, but processes and legalities and business cases are there”.
“I still want patrons, I still want a great board, but we're moving to a world of transparency, openness, business case, return on investment and being collaborative and not competitive with the sector,” he adds.
Cost cutting
The NCS Trust, which received £158m in government grants in 2020, has also been subject to controversy over funding from the Treasury at a time when the youth sector has seen cuts of £1bn over the past decade.
Its latest annual review for 2019/20 shows a multi-million pound loss attributed to unrecovered expenditure for accommodation costs of £3.6m and £3.8m, and £5m for non-returnable fees as a result of the cancellation of its 2020 summer and autumn residential programmes due to the pandemic.
Gifford, a former director at Waitrose and Partners, blames these losses, in part, to a lack of change in the programme over the past decade.
“Having one programme that's not really changed in 10 years is not sustainable,” he says, adding that he was appointed to the top role in a bid to improve the organisation's business plan.
He describes a £2.8m out-of-court payment to former contract holder The Challenge as a “specific challenge” that affected finances in 2019. The Challenge collapsed two years ago after a contract wrangle with the NCS which later resulted in legal action.
In a bid to balance the books, Gifford says he has cut head office costs by 30 per cent compared with 2019/20 through the closure of the organisation's Pembroke location, The Priory Academy, pay and recruitment freezes and reduced benefits for new staff.
He adds that he cannot rule out redundancies in the next year. “I'd prefer not to make people redundant, but we have to prepare for it and do it in the right way.”
Programme reform
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the NCS was forced to cancel summer and autumn residential programmes, moving to online and one-day offerings.
This allowed the organisation “to pilot some of the things we're wanting to do” over the next decade, Gifford says, revealing plans for a year-round offer and moving away from the NCS's traditional residential programme.
Plans include greater opportunities for work in the community and digital support on issues including mental health and resilience, alongside a residential programme which has already been cut from a maximum of four weeks.
Addressing criticism over a 12 per cent non-completion rate of the programme cited in the trust's most recent annual report, Gifford says: “We've stopped the four-week residential because it didn't necessarily add as much value as it could have done.
“Young people were, to a certain extent, voting with their feet. Data tells you stuff and I think one of the things we have to respond to is changes – in technology, in behaviour, in attitude. Young people want more choice of what they get from the programme.
“I want to do some things digitally – that's more democratic and empowering for young people. I was very mindful that the programme in itself is really powerful but you need to have, for some young people, a run off – how do you prepare them for this intervention and how do we support them afterwards?”
He adds: “We're coming from a moment to a movement – a different portfolio of experiences and that's what we experimented with in 2020.”
He does not rule out plans to expand beyond the programme's current 15 to 17 age range and into Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales if such moves are laid out in the upcoming youth policy review, which is set to be published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) imminently.
“I think it will set out the direction of travel for the youth sector and for NCS,” says Gifford.
Funding
A shift to a year-round offer would also allow the NCS to bid for “significantly less” funding from the next CSR, he adds, admitting the move could see the number of young people involved in the programme doubled, from 600,000 in 2019, on a much smaller budget.
This would also mitigate criticisms within the sector over the funding of the trust, the chief executive adds, calling for a “well-funded youth strategy” for the entire sector.
“There will be a perception that we take all the DCMS funding, but pots of funding go to the youth sector in a variety of different ways,” he says.
Working towards a more collaborative relationship with the youth sector began with inviting members of the Back Youth Alliance to feed into the organisation's recent annual report.
Gifford insists collaborations and protecting an already under-funded sector is the way to support young people coming out of the pandemic.
“With the right support, I believe this is the next great generation, and not as some in society believe the lost generation,” he says.
“We are not wanting to be a competitor, we want a collaboration, doing more for the sector.
During Covid we still had 192,000 take part in an experience, but I've yanked down the costs in head office to protect the sector and I think that's the theme – protect the sector, help everybody, help young people, but control all of your costs. That gets more money to the frontline.”
