CITIZENS UK Trustees agreed to bid for the tender to deliver training for 5,000 Community Organisers after much consideration, debate, consultation with affiliate CITIZENS alliances and with the Guild of Organisers.

We decided to make a bid because:

- We believed it was written for us – David Cameron launched The Big Society Manifesto on the day he visited our office in March 2010 and CITIZENS UK was mentioned in the document as the organisation a new Conservative Government would like to work with to train 5,000 Community Organisers. The bid specifically requested experience; track record; Alinsky; and a sustainability strategy to ensure the one year training and bursaries were not wasted. CITIZENS UK covered this criteria.

- We were keen to protect the craft and vocation of being a Community Organiser. We were aware that if we did not bid then someone else would and the delicate process of recruitment, apprenticeship, and mentoring that had gone on in CITIZENS UK for the last 22 years would be threatened. This process has delivered a professional Guild of Community Organisers (25 full time professional Community Organisers presently employed by CITIZENS UK).

- We had proposed to all major parties before the Election that the best future for the development of Community Organising in the UK was for the new government to endow an ‘Institute for Community Organising’ to sustain and promote the craft. The bid included the possibility of such an Institute being given to the winner at the end of a four year period. CITIZENS UK was keen to be the primary organisation shaping and directing such an Institute.

In the end the OCS scoring system indicated that our consortium (which included The Young Foundation and ReGenerate) lost primarily on price. We were more expensive than the two ‘preferred bidders’.

We are surprised not to have won the bid and believe this to be a missed opportunity by the Coalition Government. We wish ‘Locality’ well and expect to work with them where it is deemed to be mutually beneficial. Trustees are determined to carry on with our overall strategy of building broad based power Alliances, in major UK cities, that can train and sustain thousands of community leaders in the art of politics. There are CITIZENS Sponsoring Committees starting in Nottingham, Cardiff and Glasgow and the final Chapter of LONDON CITIZENS (North London CITIZENS) will be launched in March this year. This will make LONDON CITIZENS – with over 200 institutions in membership – the largest and most diverse community alliance in Europe.

CITIZENS UK looks forward to the first of our promised annual round table meetings with the Prime Minister and deputy Prime Minister in the next two months. We also appreciate the promise they both made to 2,500 citizens who packed Central Hall on 3rd May 2010 for ‘The Fourth Debate’ that they would attend at least two of our major national CITIZENS Assemblies in the five years of this administration.

Neil Jameson, Executive Director, CITIZENS UK (on behalf of the Trustees)