MaPs releases heavily redacted Board papers in response to WADA request
Although the Money and Pensions Service has recently been forced to stop its plans to decimate community based debt advice services, the campaign for a fair funding settlement continues. In its most recent announcement, MaPS set out its intention to provide £30 million of funding per annum for community based provision. However, this still represents a real-terms cut compared to the current financial year.
In addition, although MaPS has committed to a full consultation regarding the future of community based services, it is now clear that it wants to rule out any discussion concerning the relative funding allocations between national and community based provision. This is despite there never having been any consultation with stakeholders concerning those allocations in the first place.
We therefore made a request to the Money and Pensions Service under the Freedom of Information Act for “any Board and/or management papers which discussed how the budget for debt advice was to be allocated across the different lots”.
The MaPS response to this request can be downloaded here and the heavily redacted Board paper that has been provided to us is here.
In its response MaPS states that the heavy redactions, which include the entire ‘Management Case’, ‘Critical Success Factors’ and the Risk Assessment are justified on the basis of ‘commercial sensitivity’. We disagree, and have requested an internal review. If that fails we intend to push it to the Information Commissioner. The reality is that MaPS did not properly consider the impact of cutting community based services on vulnerable groups (as revealed by its previously published poor quality Equality Impact Assessment) and that the relative funding allocations for national and regional provision have not been properly thought through.
For any consultation to be conducted regarding the future of regional services, it must be provided with the scope to rebalance funding allocations vis a vis national, remote, services.