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Funding

Funding is a key strand of NCVO's work. Our public policy work seeks to ensure that funding and the fiscal environment best meet the needs of voluntary and community organisations.

If you would like to discuss any of our work on funding, please email Louisa Darian or telephone: 020 7520 2475.

What's new: May 2008

Earlier this year

Government proposals for Gift Aid (April)
Response to Department of Health's consultation on funding (March)
NCVO response to the budget (March)

Also in this section

Olympic Campaign

Archive

Big Lottery Fund consultation on their 2009-15 programmes

The Big Lottery Fund have published ‘Big Thinking’, a consultation document to help inform their strategic framework and plans for the UK for 2009-15. The consultation runs until 27 February 2009 and responses can be submitted on-line. Hard copies can be obtained by calling 0845 367 0243 or by emailing the Big Lottery Fund.

NCVO has produced a briefing on the consultation and will be responding to it. If you would like to feed in your views please email Louisa Darian, 020 7520 2475.

Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill: report stage and remaining stages

The remaining stages of the Dormant Accounts Bill took place on 3 November. You can read the debate online.

We briefed MPs ahead of this to ensure that a review process for the scheme remained on the face of the Bill and that it considered the effectiveness of a voluntary scheme.

We are delighted that the Government has listened to our concerns. As part of the legislation, the Treasury will undertake a review three years after the reclaim fund has been set up and this will consider a number of aspects, including the amount of money that has been transferred to the reclaim fund and how promptly this has been transferred. We were particularly pleased with Ian Pearson’s comments that,

“The Government will want to publish the findings of any review that we undertake and we will want to take forward any recommendations that come from it …..As I said in my opening remarks, the review will cover industry participation in the scheme. If, for some reason, there was little industry participation in the scheme, I would expect the review to conclude that the voluntary scheme was not working”

The Bill is now due to go back to the Lords for agreement, before it receives its Royal Assent. We will be continuing to oversee this process.

Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill: remaining stages

The remaining stages of the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill are due to take place on 3 November. NCVO has produced a briefing (PDF 17KB). In this, we welcome the Government’s amendment for a review process to report on the operation of the scheme. However, this must look at how effective the scheme has been at getting financial institutions to transfer money for reinvestment in society. We are asking MPs to raise these issues in the debate.

Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill: Committee Stage

The Bill went through Committee from the 14-16 October. Read the debates.

Martyn Jones MP tabled an amendment on the need for a reserve power to make the scheme mandatory at a later date if necessary. There was a good debate but unfortunately the amendment had to be withdrawn due to lack of support.

On the need for a triennial review, the Government were concerned about aspects of the proposed amendment. They have committed to coming back with a new amendment at Report Stage. We will be lobbying the Government to make sure that the review will consider whether a voluntary scheme is working and to ensure it has teeth.

On the allocation of the funds, the Government have maintained that youth, financial capability and, social investment (if resources permit) are the right areas to receive money from dormant accounts. Jeremy Browne MP tabled an amendment so that the Government could change these spending areas at a later point. This was rejected by the Government and the amendment was withdrawn.

We are awaiting a date for Report Stage.

Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill: House of Commons Second Reading

The Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill received its second reading in the House of Commons on 6 October. Read the transcript from the debate.

A number of our concerns were raised, including:

The need for a reserve power in the legislation to enable the Government to make the scheme mandatory at a later date, should a voluntary scheme prove unsuccessful. As the Bill stands, banks and building societies will not have to transfer money from dormant accounts for reinvestment in society.
The need for a triennial review to Parliament to report on the effectiveness of the scheme. This would include consideration as to whether or not a voluntary scheme is working.
The need for a consultation on how the money should be spent. The Bill proposes that money will be directed towards youth, financial capability and social investment. NCVO has long argued that there should have been a consultation with a wide range of stakeholders to determine funding areas.

NCVO briefed a number of MPs (PDF 20KB) ahead of second reading. Martyn Jones MP and Tom Levitt MP kindly referenced us in their speeches.

Committee Stage is timetabled for 14 and 16 October. We will be contacting Committee Members to ensure that our concerns continue to be raised.

If you would like to discuss our work in this area or have any comment please email Louisa Darian, Policy Officer, or telephone: 020 7520 2475.

Substantial donors consultation

NCVO has written a letter of response to the substantial donors consultation. The legislation was introduced in the Finance Act 2006 to counter tax avoidance where large donations were made to charity. The rules mean that charities can be penalised for entering into particular transactions with substantial donors.

We are supporting the Charity Tax Group’s position and calling for the Government to repeal the legislation. The main reason for this being that the proposed changes would not go far enough to resolve the main issues arising from the legislation. These include:

the administrative burden for charities of identifying substantial donors, connected persons and transactions which might fall within the legislation;
the large number of innocent transactions that are caught by the legislation; and
the disproportionate penalties when the legislation does apply, so that the total value of the amount paid by the charity is taxed, rather than any benefit received by the donor.

You can read the Charity Tax Group’s submission on our website. The consultation closed on 7 October.

Community Infrastructure Levy on Charities

The Community Infrastructure Levy (“the Levy”) is a proposed levy on development. In principle, it will apply whether or not there has been any increase in site value as a result of the granting of planning permission. The amount of levy to be paid will be based on the cost of local infrastructure needed, and the owners of land will be required to pay this levy to local charging authorities. NCVO, the Charity Tax Group (CTG), the Charities’ Property Association, the Churches’ Legislation Advisory Service and lawyers Bates Wells and Braithwaite are working with Members of the House of Lords to secure an exemption from this levy for registered charities. If the Government does not table its own amendment, Lord Cameron, a crossbench peer, will table an amendment to exempt charities in the week commencing 6 October, and we are working with Lord Cameron to achieve cross party support for this. A full briefing is available on our website (PDF 67KB) - for more information please email Helen Donoghue at CTG.

Conservatives report on the National Lottery

On 27 May the Conservatives published a report on the National Lottery. This raises concerns about the distributing bodies’ operational costs and the number of grants awarded to public sector bodies. The main points of our response are available on our website.

If you would like to discuss our work in this area or have any comment please email Louisa Darian or telephone: 020 7520 2475.

Government’s proposals for Gift Aid

The Government has produced their response to the Gift Aid consultation (PDF 335KB). This contained a number of recommendations, including:

payment of Gift Aid claims at a transitional rate of 22% from 2008-11;
major reform to the auditing process;
a comprehensive programme for bringing more smaller charities into Gift Aid;
redesign of guidance ; and
outreach to 5000 new charities a year through the launch of targeted marketing tools.

We have produced a briefing (PDF 28KB) on these proposals. If you would like to discuss the briefing, please email Louisa Darian or telephone: 020 7520 2475.

You can also read our media statement on the proposals.

NCVO response to Department of Health consultation on funding

NCVO has responded to the Department of Health’s Strategic Review of its funding of third sector organisations.

Download the NCVO response (Word 307KB)

If you would like to discuss our work in this area please email Louisa Darian or telephone 020 7520 2475.

NCVO response to the budget

NCVO has issued a statement in response to the 2008 Budget as announced on 12 March.

If you would like to discuss our work in this area please email Louisa Darian or telephone 020 7520 2475.

Olympic campaign

The campaign run by NCVO, Voluntary Arts Network, CCPR and Heritage Link has secured a firm commitment from Government that there will be no further raids on the National Lottery to fund the 2012 Olympic Games. While we remain concerned about the continuing diversion of good cause funds, the Minister’s announcement means that we have a firm commitment that Lottery funding will be protected from here on. You can read our press release on the NCVO website.

If you would like to discuss our work in this area or have any comment please email Louisa Darian or telephone 020 7520 2475.

Sustainable funding project

You may also be interested in the work of NCVO's Sustainable Funding Team which seeks to ensure that voluntary and community organisations are able to exploit the full range of funding and finance options available to them.

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