*Gift Aid reform and tax relief figure prominently in Budget

Chancellor George Osborne says these are 'the most generous reforms to charitable giving for 20 years'
George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has unveiled a raft of measures aimed at helping voluntary sector organisations in what he claimed were the "most radical and most generous reforms to charitable giving for more than 20 years".
In today's Budget, Osborne announced reforms that included enabling charities to claim Gift Aid on donations totalling up to £5,000 per charity without any paperwork, implementing an online claim system for the tax relief by 2013 and a 10 per cent tax break on inheritance tax for people whose wills include a 10 per cent legacy to charity.
He said 100,000 charities would benefit from the removal of Gift Aid paperwork "to the tune of £240m".
Osborne said he would retain community investment tax relief, which allows investors in community development finance institutions to reclaim up to 25 per cent of their investment in tax relief over five years. This was recently recommended for removal by the Office of Tax Simplification.
The Chancellor said he and Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, had been working on "a series of substantial reforms that will support giving, from the largest donations to the coins collected in the charity bucket".
Osborne said he wanted to make "giving 10 per cent of your legacy to charity the new norm in our country".
From April 2012, anyone who leaves 10 per cent or more of their estate to charity will have their inheritance tax bill cut by 10 per cent, Osborne said. "Let's be clear, no beneficiaries will be better off," he said. "Just the charities. To the tune of £300m."

*Resource Futures takes over hazardous waste body

The future of the National Household Hazardous Waste Forum has been assured - albeit in a limited capacity - after it was taken over for a "nominal sum" by consultancy Resource Futures.
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* Feather Beds & Fat Cats - new nef research

The fat cats are getting a cosy deal, according to new research by nef. Not content with getting trillions of pounds of public money in the bail-outs, it seems that Britain's financial sector is benefitting from a range of implicit taxpayer subsidies totalling at least £30bn a year. The new report, Feather-bedding Financial Services, details the ways in which banks are effectively supported by taxpayers from the ‘too-big-to-fail' subsidy - the guarantee that taxpayers will underwrite the banks if they get into trouble - to the ‘make-the-customer-pay' subsidy from low interest rates 

*Liverpool City Council quits big society vanguard

It says funding cuts and job losses that will 'cut the lifeline' to voluntary groups
Liverpool City Council, one of four big society vanguard areas, has pulled out of the initiative in protest at government funding cuts.
Joe Anderson, the Labour leader of Liverpool City Council, wrote to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, yesterday to inform him that government decisions had "seriously undermined" the ability of Liverpool's voluntary organisations to improve the quality of residents' lives.
Anderson wrote that the city had lost more than £100m of Area Based Grants, aimed at tackling deprivation, which had put some charities at risk of closure.
He also criticised the "extremely poor local government settlement", which left the council seeking savings of £141m over the next two years and poised to axe 1,500 jobs. A further 300 to 500 job losses are expected in the voluntary sector as a result, the council has predicted.
Anderson wrote to Cameron:"How can the city council support the big society and its aim to help communities do more for themselves when we will have to cut the lifeline to hundreds of these vital and worthwhile groups?"
He said that the government had promised to work with the council to remove problems preventing the delivery of its big society programme, but its failure to deliver a single change had "severely hampered" many parts of the programme.
Alan Lewis, chief executive of Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services, said: "I quite understand the council's reasons for pulling out, but I think the issue around the concept of the big society is bigger than simply public sector cuts."
He said that Liverpool's withdrawal from the scheme "won't make an iota of difference" because the city did not receive any funding for being a vanguard.
Cameron launched the big society vanguard areas in Liverpool in July. The other areas are Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire and the London borough of Sutton.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister'said: "We are looking into what the particular issues are and whether there were particular barriers and problems in that particular project, and seeing if there is anything we can do to unlock that.
"What we are trying to do here is something new and slightly different to what has been done in the past. The purpose of putting in place these first projects was to see what would work."

* Quarter of Greater Manchester Charities Facing Closure

Spending cuts are threatening up to 25% of Manchester charities and voluntary groups.
Spokesman for the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations (GMCVO), Alex Whinnom has revealed that a quarter of Manchester's 10,654 voluntary groups are under threat.
These organisations receive income from a range of public sector sources and many are unable to confirm funding beyond March 2011.
Chief executive of Voluntary Action Oldham, Liz Winsor-Welsh, said the funding arrangements of the sector were uncertain:
"Even if you are thinking about services that are going to be run at a local level that aren't traditionally public services, those organisations still need funding of some sort.
"And as grants start to dry up and other public sector funding starts to dry up, it's really difficult, it's really difficult to see where that money will come from."