This month’s policy roundup aims to give you a flavour into what the policy and influencing team has been up to over the past month.
By Shareen Patel, policy and influencing officer.
Autumn budget 2024
Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered the first Labour budget in nearly 15 years under the theme: ‘Fixing the foundations to deliver change.’ (All the budget documents are available on gov.uk)
Along with some welcome measures contained in the budget, the combined impact of the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, reduction of the threshold at which employers need to pay and the (albeit welcome) increase in the national living wage is a cause for concern for many civil society leaders.
ACEVO CEO, Jane Ide, commented on the budget announcement and reiterated that if civil society is to partner with government in delivering the decade of national renewal, as the Prime Minister invited us to, it is important that civil society is strong and able to play its part. ACEVO was also invited to provide comment directly to HMT and we are speaking with contacts across government to press the issue and have already met Charities Minister Stephanie Peacock last week.
Jointly with our friends at NCVO, we shared an open letter to the Chancellor asking for a commitment to reimbursing voluntary organisations’ increased employer NICs, in parity with the commitment made for the public sector. We invite you to lend your weight to the letter by adding your name to the signatories to demonstrate the strength of sentiment from sector leaders. The press release can be read here.
Charity Finance Group also issued a post-budget survey to gather views on the impact of the announcements in the budget. We urge you to please complete it by 15 November, to provide evidence for a case to HMT.
ACEVO is continuing to gather its own evidence from members to inform our conversations with those in power- and to help us ensure that we can support our members in the best ways we possibly can. Please continue to post in the community thread, or feel free to email me directly at shareen.patel@acevo.org.uk.
Civil Society Covenant framework engagement
We have published a Partner Communications and Engagement toolkit for the Civil Society Covenant. This toolkit has been designed to help you understand, engage with and talk about the UK Civil Society Covenant. It includes an overview of the Covenant, guidance for completing the form, an understanding of the ways to engage and share with your networks, how to get involved by promoting the framework including via downloadable social media and email templates, and links you may find useful. We are also developing a Peer Research Toolkit to support organisations to run workshops and events with their own networks and members and then share the feedback with us. We will publish this toolkit in due course. In the meantime, do check the answers for frequently asked questions.
We are holding four open access online workshops with NCVO, where you can drop in and contribute to the development of the draft principles. These are taking place on 21 November, 26 November, 28 November, and 3 December. These workshops are split into two for larger organisations with an income over £1m and two for smaller organisations with an income under £1m. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to book.
The engagement period will run until midday 12th December. We will then work with DCMS to analyse the data, amend the principles and create a new shared agreement. Our ambition is to publish the final document in February.
Pay and Equalities Survey 2024
This year’s Pay and Equalities Report has been published. It gives a breakdown of CEO pay and processes, working conditions, diversity and levels of satisfaction across UK charities and leadership. This year looked at new themes such as how empowered CEOs feel to make decisions without being second guessed, and the amount of time they can commit to long-term strategic planning.
This year’s survey had 1365 respondents and despite some positive trends, it seems things haven’t changed much at all. The median annual basic salary has gone up from £58,863 to £60,000 but the prevalence of regular salary reviews remains statics. The gender pay gap widened to 14.4% from just 8.3% last year, reaching its highest since the 2014 survey. Similarly to the last four years, the proportion of CEO respondents from Black, Asian and Minoritised Ethnic backgrounds has remained static at 7%. However, despite this, the majority of respondents feel satisfied with how empowered they are to make decisions without being second guessed, and 72% feel it is likely they will still be working in the charity sector in five years’ time. Members can purchase the full publication for £40, non-members for £70 and corporates for £95.
Cost of living salary increase survey
Earlier this month we re-ran our annual cost-of-living salary increase survey among members to get an insight into how sector leaders are managing financial pressures and what this means for staff salaries. You can find the results here.
Out of the 53 who said yes, when asked in percentage terms what increase they are awarding, only 36 indicated a confirmed number. It is thus not possible to provide a meaningful analysis of average percentage increases by charity income band. Of those 36, the majority of the increases are between the range of 2-5% (3.3% average). Compared to last year, 23 are awarding a smaller percentage increase this year, 7 have kept it at the same level as last year and 3 organisations are increasing it this year. The respondents who said they do not know yet if they’re awarding staff an increase stated reasons such as awaiting board approval, figuring out their affordability or waiting until closer to the end of the financial year to decide.
On the horizon
- The Employment Rights bill was debated at second reading on Monday 21 October and has now been sent to a Public Bill Committee which will scrutinise it.
- The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) bill, also known as Martyn’s Law, passed through the House of Commons Committee stage on 29 October. The report stage is due to be announced. This is a Bill to require persons with control of certain premises or events to take steps to reduce the vulnerability of the premises or event to, and the risk of physical harm to individuals arising from, acts of terrorism.
The policy and influencing team is here to help! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at policy@acevo.org.uk
