The Prince Update - March 22nd
Our writer Richard Prince shares his regular horizon scan of the sector news, flagging up developments, new funding and opportunities in the social sector for portfolio careerists and others to be aware of.
Slimmed-down Power to Change to continue to 2026
Power to Change, the independent trust that supports community businesses in England, is to extend its operations for another five years, thanks to a £20m cash injection from the National Lottery Community Fund – albeit on a smaller scale and with reduced staff numbers.
The trust, which was created as a time-limited spend-down trust six years ago, was due to end activities in 2022. The initial £150m endowment it received from the same fund in 2015 enabled it to invest £86m to date in community businesses, defined as those led by the local community and trading for community benefit. But Power to Change decided to continue beyond 2022 to support the sector through the Covid-19 pandemic and into the recovery. It will reduce employee numbers from 50 to 35 full-time positions, and decrease its direct grant-making to around £10m a year.
New National Lottery and government partnership to help more vulnerable people
The National Lottery Community Fund is to to invest almost £18 million in government’s ‘Changing Futures’ programme. This adds to the existing £46m fund to expand the programme to £64 million which will help more adults facing multiple issues such as homelessness, substance misuse and domestic abuse. The additional funding will extend the length of the programme to help local partnerships develop longer term and more effective support for those in need. Twenty one areas have been shortlisted for the programme and will submit full plans
Hundreds of millions of pounds yet to be paid out from Culture Recovery Fund
Hundreds of millions of pounds in grant funding and loans has still not been awarded from the government's £1.6bn Culture Recovery Fund, according to the National Audit Office. Of the £830m grants and loans funding allocated to the heritage and arts sectors so far, only £495m has been paid out, according to a new report by the government's spending watchdog.
The fund was announced by culture secretary Oliver Dowden in August. It is intended to help “culturally significant” organisations recover from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The funding has been released in tranches, and £1bn was given to several arm's length bodies, including the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England, to be distributed on behalf of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. But DCMS has still not paid out from its second phase of funding, totalling £400m, which it announced in December, with decisions scheduled to be made this month.
IFS - The Chancellor’s spending plans are even tighter than they seem
The March Budget was not short of spending announcements. The Chancellor extended some £65 billion of support for households and businesses into the coming financial year, including high-profile extensions to the furlough scheme, self-employment income support scheme, and the £20 a week uplift to universal credit. But buried in the Budget document, and unmentioned in the Chancellor’s speech to the House, was a £4 billion a year cut to departments’ non-virus budgets from 2022−23 onwards, on top of the £10 to £13 billion cut from those spending plans in November.
The IFS has gone further in its analysis and found that if, instead of focusing on year-on-year changes, we compare to the level of spending that was planned pre-pandemic, the cut is greater still. The outlook for unprotected public services under these plans is therefore even tougher than it seems. As things stand though, for many public services, the first half of the 2020s could feel quite a lot like the first half of the 2010s.
Comment: not quite the end to austerity that was promised
Impact of Covid-19 on the VCSE sector – new research
New research shows that the impact of the pandemic has been “uneven and unpredictable” on voluntary organisations and warns of projected declines in funding from all income sources in the next financial year.
· Income from trading activity expected to drop more than 17% next year.
· Two in five voluntary organisations have six months left of reserves.
· Many charities now run fewer services than pre-pandemic, others have expanded.
The full report can be found at Respond, Recover, Reset: The Voluntary Sector and Covid-19.
Homeworking sounds good – until your job takes over your life
The Financial Times recently reported that some of Britain’s largest employers are in the midst of “reviews of working practices” and that most of the companies its journalists had contacted said they expected to soon introduce “hybrid” employment models split between the office and home. But long before the arrival of Covid-19, technology was blurring the distinctions between leisure and work, as demands on people’s time poured into their homes via laptops and smartphones.
Now the pandemic also seems to have created the perfect pretext for work and downtime becoming fatally blurred: if your home now doubles as your workplace, you should not be surprised if your job seems to have taken over even more of your life. Perhaps the key to the widely held belief that homeworking makes people more productive is: it may well do, but only because it makes them put in more hours.
Comment: be careful what you wish for! Interesting piece on homeworking and life balance
A year ago we were encouraged to Stay at Home, Protect the NHS and Save Lives, as the country went into its first full lockdown. Little did we think then that we’d be celebrating the anniversary of that moment in yet another lockdown. But here we are. To mark the occasion, The Resolution Foundation reflects on the big picture of where the Government has succeeded, and failed, over the past 12 months.
We should celebrate the success of our vaccination programme that is not only saving lives but offering us the prospect of a faster recovery. Unprecedented economic policy measures have also insured households and firms against much of the pandemic’s economic damage.
But the central, and repeated, failure to act swiftly to prevent the spread of the virus has not only cost tens of thousands of lives: it also magnified the economic damage with deeper and longer-lasting restrictions on economic activity.
This has also deepened the divide between richer households saving more, and poorer households taking on more debt. Indeed, while Covid-19 has touched everyone, lower-income families have borne the brunt of the crisis in terms of their lives and livelihoods. This should not be forgotten as we look to rebuild post-pandemic Britain.
Comment: A good summary to read while we’re waiting for the overdue public enquiry to start
State of Social Enterprise Survey - signup
Social enterprises may be contacted by Social Enterprise UK and their partner BMG Research, who are carrying out the research. You can contact BMG via email to request to take part socialenterprisesurvey@bmgresearch.com. The State of Social Enterprise report is the definitive guide to the state of the social enterprise sector in the UK containing data on turnover, scale, who social enterprises employ, where they operate, who they trade with, pay ratios and more. Published every two years it’s the place to go to for in-depth information on the sector.
UK social enterprise 'top 100' to champion climate action and Covid recovery
Pioneers Post and NatWest are once again seeking entries for the NatWest SE100 Index & Social Business Awards. Don't miss your chance to be counted among the UK's top social enterprises this year – enter by midnight on 25 April.
Pride in London's entire community advisory board quits amid allegations Black voices are ignored
Every member of Pride in London's community advisory board quit the community interest company yesterday "to draw attention to the culture of bullying, gaslighting and marginalisation", in light on allegations about racism.
Comment: this follows from the recent scandals at NCVO and shows the challenge even high-profile equalities organisations in the sector have on race and diversity