Not much to report in the budget (well, obviously lots to report: a cut in income tax, inheritcan tax threshold raised, an Environmental Transformation fund, and, shock of all shocks, the tax on cigarettes has gone up….) as far as the third sector is concerned.

• No decision on unclaimed assets, though the emphasis seems very much on youth services on financial capability/inclusion.

• Social enterprise action plan gets a mention, including the Community Investment Tax Relief model for encouraging investment; the change there is that CDFIs will have more flexibility in how they can use funds raised under CITR (see below for the technicalities)

• Futurebuilders will be open to ALL third sector organisations from spring 2008; i.e. they’ve widened the criteria to cover all areas of service delivery…

• The biggest new thing, as far as I can see, is the £80 million to promote "community action and voice" through core-funding for grassroots community organisations; this looks genuinely interesting, and should get a mighty hooray by the looks of it: exactly the kind of devolved-to-the-grassroots-grants-are-needed-as-well-as-loans type funding that SSE (amongst others) has been calling for. It will be administered by the Office of the Third Sector, and "channelled through third sector partners at a local level, such as Community Foundations"

The OTS has a press release about it with more info, along with the Futurebuilders and CITR developments in more detail…