Agenda item

To consider the call-in of the Cabinet’s decisions relating to the capital community grants scheme, taken on 1 June 2012.  Councillors Jim Halliday, Andrew Crawford, Tony de Vere and Julie Mayhew-Archer have called in the decision as they believe that that they do not comply with the principles set out in Article 13 of the Constitution.  The call-in is made on the grounds set out in the appendix (page 13).  Also appended are the report to Cabinet (page 15), a briefing paper to Cabinet on the capital community grants scheme (page 24), and the adopted minute from that meeting (page 26). 

Options open to the Scrutiny Committee:

1. to refer the decision back to the Cabinet for reconsideration, setting out its concerns.

2. to not refer the decision back to the Cabinet for reconsideration.  The decision shall then take effect from the date of this meeting of the Scrutiny Committee. 

The committee considered the call-in of the Cabinet’s decision relating to the capital community grants scheme, taken on 1 June 2012. This item had been considered by the Scrutiny Committee on 24 May, prior to the Cabinet decision. Councillors Jim Halliday, Andrew Crawford, Julie Mayhew-Archer and Tony de Vere called in the decision as they did not believe that it complied with the principles set out in Article 13 of the constitution. The committee considered the report to Cabinet, a briefing paper to Cabinet setting out Scrutiny Committee’s views on the scheme, and the adopted minute from the Cabinet meeting.

The cabinet member for corporate strategy, Councillor Matthew Barber was present to answer questions and assist in the discussion of this item.

The call-in notice raised two main issues, which are set out at a) and b) below

a)    The councillors, who called this item in, wished to amend the wording of the scheme eligibility criteria to read “applications will normally only be considered if organisations/ projects meet the following eligibility criteria…” The insertion of the word “normally” would give some flexibility for officers to consider applications where it was impractical, for good reason, to meet the criteria prior to the application being made.

b)    The committee had given the Cabinet a clear steer towards Option 2 of the methods of allocating the budgets to the area committees, as this meant that funding would be equally distributed on a per capita basis. A meeting of the Cabinet on Friday 1 June 2012 had decided on Option 3. The councillors making the call-in wanted to know why such a strong recommendation had been ignored.

Councillor Matthew Barber, cabinet member for corporate strategy explained the following:

• Option 3 was set out in the report to Cabinet and the Scrutiny Committee, and was different to the one used in the call-in request. The version used by Cabinet had described an additional 11 “phantom” parishes for Abingdon; meaning that the number of parishes more accurately reflected the number of councillors and therefore increased Abingdon’s share of the grant from 21.2 per cent to 24.63 per cent.  Option 3, as it was set out, was subject to the figures being updated.

• Whichever option was used would be monitored and reviewed after a year of operation.

• Option 3 took into consideration both the number of electors and the number of communities, especially rural ones, and slightly disadvantaged the urban centres. This helped to balance up capital investment: all three of the Vale’s towns receive a significant amount of capital investment from the district council but rural parishes are not as well catered for. The capital grants scheme is the main avenue of securing capital funding for rural communities. Rural areas also have a larger number of village halls and similar facilities to maintain than the towns.

The committee discussed this item in detail. There were significant concerns about the equity of Option 3, particularly as council tax was generally higher in the towns. It was pointed out that residents from across the Vale used the facilities in the towns, but that these were contributed to by higher council tax from town residents. The parishes set low parish precepts and would be able to increase their parish to fund capital projects if they so wished.

Councillor Matthew Barber agreed to review the decision and to take an individual cabinet member decision to speed up the introduction of the scheme. He agreed to make this available for scrutiny call-in to allow committee members to further review his decisions. The committee was content with this approach.

RESOLVED: (For 6; Against 5; Abstentions 1)

a)    To request the cabinet member for corporate strategy to further review the capital community grants scheme to:

i.      Amend the scheme eligibility criteria to read “Applications will normally only be considered if organisations/ projects meet the following eligibility criteria…”

ii.     To use Option 3 for the allocation of budgets to area committees, using the version set out in the report to Cabinet and to Scrutiny Committee which includes the “phantom” parishes to give Abingdon a parish count of 14. This subject to being updated to reflect the most recent figures. The logic and rationale behind this, and an explanation to clarify the issue of “phantom” parishes to be published to ensure that it is clear to future decision makers.

b)    To agree that, rather than referring to this matter back to Cabinet, the decision can be taken by the cabinet member for corporate strategy. This will be subject to call-in.