Government to treat v differently in strategic partner review

Finance | Vibeka Mair | 18 Aug 2010

Government strategic partner v is "being treated differently" from other strategic partners who are facing a government review, Civil Society has learned.

This month, the Office for Civil Society (OCS) sent a letter to its strategic partners revealing it planned to reduce their numbers from 42 to a maximum of 15 and cut their funding by nearly 40 per cent from March 2011.

The letter also said the OCS would ensure that no organisation would receive more than 25 per cent of its funding from the agency and that no one organisation would receive £500,000 or more.

However, v has told Civil Society that it has not received the letter as it is being "treated differently" from the other partners.

An OCS spokesperson confirmed that v was being treated differently from other strategic partners as the government was essentially v’s main funder:

“The government is in contact with them on a daily basis,” he said. “They will be treated differently from other strategic partners as the scheme set out in the letter will limit what v does. So v is being looked at in a different way.”

He added the government was looking at separate funding arrangements for v and it wouldn’t be included in the new batch of strategic partners in the same way it was currently.

According to our feature on public spending cuts in Charity Finance March 2010, v received £51.7m from the Cabinet Office in 2009, which accounts for 95 per cent of its funding.

It is one of four strategic partners who get over 70 per cent of their income from government and one of seven strategic partners who receive more than £500,000 from the Cabinet Office.

The OCS would not confirm whether these organisations are being treated differently too.

Strategic partners who get over 80 per cent of their income from government, according to our calculations, are:

Those who get £500,000 or more are:

Government income over 500k

Images

Directory: Office for Civil Society | v

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.