Agenda item

To consider report 85/10 of the head of corporate strategy. 

Councillor Angela Lawrence declared a personal and prejudicial interest in this item and in accordance with Standing Order 34, she left the room during the debate on support for town and parish councils’ twinning activities. 

The Executive considered report 85/10 of the head of corporate strategy regarding a review of the council’s community grants scheme. 

The Scrutiny Committee had appointed a task group to review the scheme.  The task group had recommended that the grants criteria should remain unchanged but recommended improvements to the process for awarding grants.  There should be an online application form and the officers should check the application against the criteria before categorising applications into those projects that should be funding priorities, those that should receive some support, and those that should not.  The task group had also recommended that the Executive continued to delegate authority to determine the majority of community grant applications to the area committees with 80 per cent of the budget apportioned between the committees on an electorate basis.  The remaining 20 per cent of the budget should be reserved for the Executive to determine.  To save costs, all area committees should determine the applications twice a year, meeting on the same day in Abingdon.  Applicants should be able to make a presentation to the committee before their application was determined.  Officers should have delegated authority to determine applications for grants under £1,000.  The area committees should determine urgent applications by email between meetings every six months.  The Scrutiny Committee had supported the task group and recommended these changes to the Executive.  The Executive supported the task group’s recommended changes. 

The council would need to purchase software to manage the application process.  The Scrutiny Committee recommended funding this from the Executive’s proportion of the community grants budget.  The Executive agreed with this. 

The Scrutiny Committee had additionally recommended that town and parish councils should be able to apply for both capital and revenue grants.  The Executive disagreed, believing that town and parish councils should fund revenue services, such as street cleaning and twinning activities, through their parish precepts.  Grants would not be available to these councils for revenue services.  However, the community grants scheme would allow these councils to apply for capital grants. 

Finally, the Executive agreed to invite the area committees to meet in early April and early October to determine the community grant applications delegated to them, subject to the Council agreeing a community grants budget in February.  The monitoring officer advised that candidates for election at the district council elections in May 2011 must not make any media or public statements about forthcoming or determined grant applications. 

RESOLVED

(a)               To agree the scrutiny task group’s recommendations for managing and determining the community grants budget in the future, and to thank the task group for its work;

(b)       To amend the community grants criteria so that town and parish councils can apply for grants towards capital projects but not revenue grants;

(c)        To invite the area committees to meet no more than twice each year, in early April and early October, to determine community grants applications delegated to them, and request that to save costs, these six-monthly area committee meetings are all held on one day in Abingdon; and

(d)       To agree to fund the grants management software from the proportion of the community grants budget allocated to the Executive.