This policy round-up will help you stay informed about latest developments on ACEVO’s key areas of policy and influencing work and a flavour of what the team has been focusing on in the last month.
By Shareen Patel, policy and influencing officer at ACEVO.
Ministerial roundtable
At the beginning of February, we were very pleased to be able to convene a roundtable with the Minister for Civil Society Stuart Andrew MP and four ACEVO CEO members – Jane Harris (Speech and Language UK), Jolanta Lasota (Ambitious about Autism), Thomas Lawson (Turn2us) and Irene Sobowale (Disabilities Trust). Thank you to our members for giving their time and energy to this. The purpose of the roundtable was to provide a forward-look to the challenges and opportunities over the next 18 months and discussion was based around three key themes of workforce, the commissioning environment and the role of charities in wider policy making across government. Take a look at the tweet from DCMS and the picture of the Minister, Jane, Roberta and the CEOs below. We look forward to continuing the conversation between the Minister and sector leaders, focused on enabling the power of civil society to be felt across government.
Preparing for the spring budget
Together with other sector bodies and as part of the Civil Society Group, we contributed to a submission to Treasury for the upcoming Spring Budget on Wednesday 15 March. We focus on five key asks:
- Support for households by reducing benefit deductions, increasing the Local Housing Allowance and introducing a social tariff on energy.
- Streamline and review the charity tax and compliance systems: address the issue of Irrecoverable VAT; extend the exemption that allows charities to carry out primary purpose trades to all trades; bring in electronic filing for charities at Companies House.
- Increase funding to local government, so that councils can uplift grants and contracts in line with inflation and cover the true cost of delivering commissioned public services.
- Provide grants for charities to improve energy efficiency and minimum standards for commercial buildings.
- Expand support for organisations with high energy usage through the Energy and Trade Intensive Industries scheme.
Energy costs
We continued our engagement with officials at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to discuss the Energy Bill Discount Scheme in more detail and contributed to a joint submission, with NCVO, to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) now-closed inquiry on energy bill support.
Please note that the webinar we are hosting with Utility Aid, the UK’s largest energy broker for the not-for-profit sector, that was due to take place on Tuesday 7 February has been rescheduled to Thursday 20 April 11:00-12:00. If you haven’t done so already, please book your place here to gain further understanding of the next steps that your charity can take in managing rising energy costs.
Public Order Bill
The Public Order Bill has now completed its stages in the House of Lords. As Liberty has said in their recent blog, MPs will have another chance to get “oppressive powers” back into the Bill and it has recently been confirmed that the Bill will be returning to the Commons for consideration of Lords amendments on Tuesday 7 March. The pressure coming from civil society made way for several wins, for example Peers rejecting plans to give police powers to shut down protests in the likelihood that they become disruptive later and voting in favour of plans to introduce greater protections for journalists. We will continue to monitor the Bill’s progress and work collaboratively with others to ensure the right to campaign is protected. Our latest blog goes into more detail.
Charity Commission draft guidance for trustees on charities and social media
We are currently working on our response to the draft guidance. The three areas of concern we have are around management of risk, engaging with what the Charity Commission deem to be controversial topics or problematic content, and personal accounts. We want to ensure that the guidance is as clear and concise as possible and does not act as a limitation to our members, nor adds additional burdens on organisations themselves. The consultation closes on Tuesday 14 March. We welcome any input you may have so should you wish to share your thoughts, please contact me on shareen.patel@acevo.org.uk.
