WIREDGOV

Yesterday, the Office of the Third Sector published a summary of responses to the consultation including next steps. To fund the SIWB’s initial capitalisation, Government also announced in the Pre-Budget Report today, its intention to commit up to £75 million of the funds expected to be released through the Dormant Accounts Scheme in England, subject to the final volume of funds and alongside funding other priorities.

The consultation on the Social Investment Wholesale Bank (SIWB) closed on the 7 October 2009. We received around 80 responses from a range of stakeholders from grantmakers and foundations, third sector umbrella and front line organisations, specialist financial intermediaries and the mainstream commercial sector. Today, the Office of the Third Sector published a summary of responses to the consultation including next steps.

In the coming months, the Government will finalise the model for the SIWB. We will also aim to begin the process of engaging with potential providers of this financial institution by Budget 2010.

Other PBR 2009 announcements:

• To support communities and tackle financial exclusion, the government will explore options with the banks to improve the information available on services delivered in deprived communities.
• Gift Aid donor research on the possible effects of redirecting Gift Aid higher-rate relief from donors to charities will be published on the HMT and HMRC websites on 15 December 2009.
• The Government proposes to replace the current anti-avoidance rules relating to substantial donors to charities with new rules to deny tax relief on donations to charities where the donor is party to an arrangement, the purpose or one of the main purposes of which is to extract value from the charity.
• A 12 month extension of the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme, making an additional £500 million of lending available to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), including social enterprises was announced.

The Government also reinforced its commitment to strengthening the role of civic society in public life by: 

• announcing a pilot of the Social Impact Bonds model
• promoting wider use of community shares
• enabling community groups already owning community assets acquired with
• Government funding to maximise their finance-raising potential by considering the scope for removing clawback conditions
• producing a regularly updated Civic Health Index.

To download a copy of the full Pre-Budget Report, please visit the Treasury website via the link below:

• HM Treasury external website - PDF, 3.87MB, 216 pages

SIWB Summary of responses

In a joint foreword to the publication,  Liam Byrne - Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Angela Smith - Minister for the Third Sector said:

“Organisations, driven by a social mission, are changing lives for the better every day, delivering important social and environmental outcomes and increasingly delivering core public services. 

The task now is to push this frontier further still by ensuring that there are more resources - financial and human - to continue to innovate in this way.

We believe that social investment could make a huge difference to the third sector and other organisations with social impact. We are therefore committed to the development of a strong and sustainable social investment market that crowds in new players and new flows of capital”.

The consultation response showed a strong consensus for a mission-driven financial institution, operating independently from Government and retail intermediaries and at a wholesale level to support the development of a strong and sustainable social investment market in the UK.

Respondents agreed that the SIWB should crowd in – not out – existing and new players and encourage new flows of capital in this space.

A copy of the consultation response publication can be downloaded here:

• Social Investment Wholesale Bank - Summary of responses to the consultation (PDF, 413KB, 18 pages