Merger means more done better says Coyle

Ian Macrae

In these straitened times, when charities are struggling, if not entirely to keep afloat, then to weather the storm in choppy economic seas, it’s unsurprising that mergers and re-branding exercises find a place among the proactive measures organisations can use to try to keep control of their own destinies.

Over recent years we’ve seen the amalgamation of two formerly separate groups to form Age UK, a severe rationalisation among charities involved with blind and partially sighted people, and the total re-branding of the big deafness charity as Hearing Concern, with its emphasis plainly on matters of prevention and cure rather than rights and equality.

While such activity is often billed as a merger, in reality it is often the subsuming, even the taking over, of smaller organisations by larger ones.

But in the case of the most recent aggregation, that of the Royal Association on Disability Rights (RADAR) – itself only recently rebranded as such – Disability Alliance (DA) and the National Centre for Independent Living (NCIL), there is, according to Neil Coyle, a real sense of merger for reasons of pragmatism, common cause and rationalisation of resources.

Coyle, who is about to transmogrify into the Director of Policy for Disability Rights UK, as the new organisation will be known, also argues that the coming together will also bring benefits beyond the unified charity to individual disabled people.

“The organisation aims to have as many disabled members as possible. Those disabled members will have voting rights so they will be able to shape the new organisation’s approach. 75% of trustees will be disabled people so disabled people will be better represented. It’ll be a more authentic voice than the three existing charities. We’ll have a larger, stronger national voice.”

However, says Coyle, vestiges of the old brands will live on under the new umbrella.

“The expectation is that we’ll keep the RADAR Key Scheme, the Disability Rights Handbook [produced by his own organisation, DA] and NCIL’s direct payments material, so those key areas which people associate with each organisation will be retained.”

Disability Rights UK will come into being on 1 January 2012. It will be located in the existing RADAR offices at City Forum on the edge of the City of London and during the transitional period before full launch, likely to be in July, the website will be co-branded.

“We recognise what each of the charities brings”, says Coyle, “and we want to sustain the benefits to individual disabled people and beyond that each of the brands provides. But the aim is to do more and better in the new organisation.”

During the consultation on the merger among members of all three charities, there were those from outside that constituency who had already begun to question the new body’s credentials as truly an organisation of disabled people. Coyle (pictured) refutes such doubts.

“It’s very much an organisation of. The aspiration is to have 75% of staff as disabled people. The only voting rights will be held by individual disabled people and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs). We will have members who aren’t DPOs, but they won’t have the same rights as disabled people.”

He foresees that, in organisational terms, there will be efficiency benefits deriving from the streamlining of costs and back-office functions resulting from the amalgamation.

“Just by moving in together, by cohabiting, as it were, we bring down those costs and that enables us either to put something into reserve, or invest in services and staff and ensure that we’re able, through those staff, to do more.”

It’s also hoped that greater effectiveness will be achieved in external matters too.

“There are times now when each of us has a representative at a particular government meeting. That’s had some benefits, but it’s also duplication of effort. By not having multiple staff at external meetings, we will be able to dedicate internal staff to other issues.”

The merger announcement comes at the time of publication of the report by Lord Low of Dalston of his independent review into the likely impact on disabled residents in care homes of the Government’s proposal to withdraw payment of the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA). His recommendation that the Government should withdraw the proposal hardly comes as a surprise.

“That’s one way of putting it”, Coyle responds.

“Nor surprise either given the wealth of evidence he received and the complete lack of evidence for the Government’s position. The lack of any justification for what would have been a deeply pernicious cut to 78,000 disabled people and their families.

“Lord Low’s recommendations should be looked at through the prism of what best meets the Government’s own aspirations for disabled people’s choice and control.

“With the Miller review, the Department of Work and Pension’s own internal review, we still don’t know what its terms of reference are. We still don’t know when it’s going to conclude. We still don’t know what it’s looking at.”

But given that the Government is conducting that review of its own, how optimistic is Coyle that they will take any account of Lord Low’s recommendations?

“We know the Government is considering the Low review’s recommendations. We are expecting an announcement imminently on their plans before the House of Lords scrutinises them in more detail. We’re optimistic that the Government will acknowledge the importance of Lord Low’s recommendations and make them extremely timely.”