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Intelligent Monitoring

5 August 2009

The National Audit Office has produced new practical guidance aimed at saving voluntary and community organisations time and money by reducing the paperwork they are currently required to collect when providing public sector-commissioned services.

Intelligent Monitoring will help government cut paperwork while still enabling it to monitor the £12 billion it gives to charities and other voluntary and community organisations each year.

VCS organisations that receive public funding have to account for how they have spent it and demonstrate the impact they have achieved with it. The cost of producing this information, however, must be proportionate to the risks and benefits involved. Cutting unnecessary red tape can free up time and money that would be better spent focusing on the key services provided.

Alongside this, the Office of the Third Sector has launched its Principles of proportionate monitoring and reporting, as a response to a report by New Philanthropy Capital in September 2008 called Turning the Tables. The report found that the average monitoring burden by all types of funder was 6 pence in the pound, but central government funding imposed a higher burden - on average costing 12 pence in every pound of funding. The principles will apply to all new funding streams.