Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing trend to contract businesses to deliver public services. This trend, of course, goes back decades and indeed centuries but began to accelerate during Mrs Thatcher's Government and continued at an even greater pace during Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's thirteen years.

When we speak of the retail sector, most of us easily differentiate between Tesco's and the local corner shop - we don't have to be prompted to draw the distinction. So why is it that Government, some national third sector bodies and spokespeople 'assume' that the third sector is homogeneous and principally made up of large contracting bodies, with the other smaller community groups side-lined as less important, if not irrelevant?