The Office of the Third Sector is now the Office for Civil Society. The new government has announced that Nick Hurd will be the Minister for Civil Society in the Cabinet Office, with responsibility for charities, social enterprises and voluntary organisations. Hurd had been shadow charities minister for the eighteen months before the general election, and is the Conservative MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. Official news release at cabinetoffice

The new cabinet

The Guardian have a handy guide to the new cabinet at Guardian.co.uk

Giving World Online (GWO) is a scheme set up to help to community groups and charities access free surplus goods from businesses and organisations whilst at the same time helping reduce the amount of goods sent to landfill. In the next three months GWO will be engaging with businesses in the London and Greater London region to encourage them to use GWO's free service to redirect their surplus goods onto charities and groups that could make use of them for their beneficiaries. Director Rama Bhalla said: "Our service is available to all charities and community groups but we are particularly aware that many smaller organisations are often volunteer-led or operate on very limited funds.

We are focussing our efforts on engaging more businesses to use GWO to directly help community groups in their locality access surplus stock which could be of great benefit”.  Since GWO's soft launch in December 2008 more than half a million pounds worth of quality goods have been redirected from landfill to UK charities. Plans are to expand the reach of the organisation and Rama added: "Any bona fide community group or charity can visit our website and register to receive goods as well as publicising items that they need. The process is very simple." For further details visit here.

English Heritage, with the Heritage Lottery Fund, are running a Repair Grants for Places of Worship in England scheme, which is available to support urgent repair projects to listed places of worship in England where the overall project cost is estimated to be in excess of £10,000. They welcome applications from any faith group that worships in a listed building, regardless of the type of building.

Applications can be made in two batches each year, with this year's application deadlines being 30th June 2010 for grade I and II listed buildings and 30th September 2010 for grade II buildings. An application pack can be downloaded from English-heritage uk where you can also find details of your local English Heritage regional office to help you with any queries.