Society daily 21.04.2010

Today's top Society news and comment Young iPod users risking permanent hearing damage Man in sheltered accommodation lived with corpse for 10 years Baby P stepfather loses rape conviction appeal No applications yet to Labour's £9.3m fast-track planning body All today's SocietyGuardian stories Full coverage: Danny Dorling's book Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists News: London's richest worth 273 times its poorest inhabitants Dorling interview: "Inequality on a scale with Victorian society" Datablog: Dorling's guide to inequality data Other news A housing association has been forced to apologise after it asked a tenant to pay extra rent in case he died , reports Inside Housing. A survey of GPs finds that NHS "efficiency savings" are already affecting frontline services , reports the Daily Telegraph. The number of assaults on children under 10 is rising - one explanation is that the high costs of putting children in care means that children remain in violent homes for longer , according to the Independent. Today's SocietyGuardian supplement highlights Denis Campbell on Tory alternatives to methadone treatment David Brindle: state funding now dominates the voluntary sector Will rough sleepers give up street life for £3,000? Mark Johnson on the political parties and cutting reoffending rates It's looking bleak for charities... More gloomy news for the charity sector . Not only is it worried about state funding ( see my colleague David Brindle's SocietyGuardian column today ), but there is increasing unease about private sources of income. The recession is tightening its grip on charity finances, and the "numbers", as they say, aren't getting any better. Research out today says income from investments for the top 500 UK fundraising charities fell by 8.4% last year (2008-09). Their total investment pot shrunk by more than a fifth, while their total assets - which includes cash in the bank, property and so on - dipped by 10%. The research, by Cathy Pharoah, professor of charity funding at Cass Business School , cites four well-known charities that saw the value of their investments go down last year. They are: * Cancer Research UK (down from £230m to £154m); * Royal National Lifeboat Institution (down from £281m to £221m); * NSPCC (down from £73m to £49m); * The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association (down from £145m to £127m). How will this affect charities? Pharaoh says it will vary from organisation to organisation. But seeing the value of investments diminish on this scale is likely to see most charities less confident about embarking on new research programmes, committing to new services or taking out loans. All of which could have a negative knock-on effect for beneficiaries. Pharoah expects charitable foundations to have experienced similar falls in investment income - which may also have a negative effect on charities' grant income. The research provides a foretaste of her Charity Market Monitor due to be published in June, which will look also at the recession's effect on other forms of charity income such as donations, grants, contracts and legacies. It is then that we'll get a more rounded picture of the financial pressures facing the voluntary sector. But on the other hand... Times are good for some in the charity sector. A Guardian report today about strike action in a north-west London academy school notes that Sir Bruce Liddington, the director general of the academy sponsor called E-Act, which runs eight schools, is paid £265,000 a year . This makes him not only one of the highest-paid education executives in the country (outside the university sector) but one of the highest-earning charity leaders. E-Act calls itself a "social enterprise". So is Liddington a talented entrepreneur who has risked everything to build up his business and is now reaping the rewards? No, he's a former headteacher and senior civil servant who was appointed by then prime minister Tony Blair ( who you will recall also now claims to be a social entrepreneur ) to run the government's academies programme. The role was abolished by Gordon Brown in 2007 and Liddington joined E-Act in January 2009, following the well-trodden path of former mandarins who take lucrative administrative jobs in the markets and businesses they have helped to nurture while in Whitehall. Earlier this month, the Guardian reported on claims that Liddington had been accused of "enjoying a culture of excess" at taxpayers' expense, racking up expenses claims on taxis and hotel rooms worth thousands of pounds . Liddington initially denied claiming for hotel rooms, only changing his stance and saying he would repay the expense when the Guardian presented him with documentary evidence. (According to the article he also used his hotel room minibar, which is a dead giveaway: in my view, no-one submits to the legalised extortion of the minibar unless they think someone else is paying for it). So how does this registered charity and social enterprise justify paying its director general £265,000 a year? He may well be a talented and experienced administrator, but will Liddington have to explain his salary to the Treasury, in common with public servants who earn more than £150,000 ( which is what Gordon Brown earns after taking a £48,000 pay cut ) or will E-Act's charitable status mean he escapes this obligation, despite its dependence on public money? Why did it, as the Guardian reports, approve a 5% bonus for Liddington at a time when teachers at its academies were receiving a 1% pay rise? Society Guardian events National Commissioning conference 10. Beyond efficiencies, doing things differently. 15-16 June, Lowry Hotel, Manchester. Speakers include: Solace chief executive David Clark , former Department of Health lead on social care personalisation John Bolton, new King's Fund chief executive Chris Ham , and Social Care Institute for Excellence chief executive Julie Jones . The Public Procurement show . The UK's leading event for public sector procurement. 15-16 June, ExceL, London SocietyGuardian Social Enterprise Summit We are starting to plan this year's SocietyGuardian Social Enterprise Summit. Last year's summit was a great success - you can read about it here . Once again we are looking to showcase inspiration, innovation and practical ideas on how social enterprises can deliver public services. Whether you are from the public sector or from a social business, we want you to tell us who you'd like to see and what you would like to see discussed. Email to [email protected] . You can Follow Guardian Social Enterprise on Twitter SocietyGuardian blogs Joe Public Sarah Boseley's global health blog SocietyGuardian links Sign up to Society daily email briefing Society on Twitter SocietyGuardian.co.uk Public - the Guardian's website for senior public sector executives The Guardian's public and voluntary sector careers page Hundreds of public and voluntary sector jobs Email the Society Daily editor: [email protected] Email the SocietyGuardian editor: [email protected]