[WiLT] Government should be made to explain short-term funding

[WiL Admin]

Government should be made to explain short-term funding
Government departments should be made to offer three-year funding
deals to charities or explain why they are not doing so, Compact
Commissioner John Stoker has said.

Stoker is calling on ministers to institute the system following
concerns voiced by the NCVO yesterday that rape and sexual abuse
projects across England and Wales are facing imminent closure after
having their funding cut at very short notice.

According to the NCVO, projects under threat include a rape crisis
centre in High Wycombe that was only given a few weeks' notice that it
wouldn't receive funding in the coming year from the Ministry of
Justice's Victims Fund. The fund distributes £1.25m to voluntary
organisations working with victims of sexual violence and abuse.

The umbrella group, which is calling on the Government to provide
interim funding to those rape crisis centres facing closure, says
funding for the centres' previous year's work ran out in March but
some have still not heard either whether it will be renewed, while
others had waited for months for an answer.

Stoker said the Compact committed Government bodies to keeping
voluntary organisations informed about progress with funding
applications and to be timely in giving funding decisions. Charities
are required to be given a minimum of three months' notice of the end
of grant funding.

"This commitment appears not to have been kept in this case," he said.
"I have asked the Ministry of Justice to make a statement of the
circumstances, for confirmation that funding decisions for the current
delivery year are not similarly outstanding in other programmes, and
for future assurances that Compact commitments to prompt decisions on
funding will be observed."

Stoker is also concerned that the length of Victims Fund grants has
been reduced from two years to one, pointing out that the Government's
interim report on the third sector review last December said
three-year funding to third sector organisations should be "the norm
rather than the exception".

He said: "I welcome this clearer commitment, and have suggested to
ministers that it should be underpinned by a simple process of public
reporting under which departments and agencies would demonstrate
delivery and give reasons for any departures from the norm."

>From Third Sector online at
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/DailyBulletin/668199/Government-made-explain-short-term-funding/921B57DC862B55459A35FD901D5167BF/

Posted on WiLT blog at
http://www.freecharity.org.uk/~womeninlondon/?p=341