Agenda item

To formally agree the schemes to be funded through the Ward Committee for 2012/13 (to view the schemes for the ward go to www.gov.uk/wards/)

Kate Bowers, City of York Council’s Head of Neighbourhood Management, introduced the launch of Community Contracts, agreements between Ward Committees, the local community, council departments and other organisations to provide services such as street cleaning, libraries, schools and policing. She explained that Contracts would vary depending on the ambitions of individual wards.

Contracts would address priorities set by members based on information received from residents, statistics and local knowledge to provide a plan to meet these. It was hoped that this would focus services, targeting where action was required. Priorities would then be sought annually for inclusion in the contract. Draft copies were circulated to residents at the meeting for their information.

The Parish Council were encouraged to provide ward specific information for inclusion in the Strensall contract. As the contracts would be fairly comprehensive documents they would become an online resource for the ward.

A number of residents expressed concerns at the work of the Neighbourhood Management Unit and their input into the ward. Examples were provided of work undertaken by the Unit in an effort to effect frontline service delivery and outreach work in the ward.

Members also expressed their concerns at the proposed changes which appeared to downgrade the importance of Parish Council’s. Particularly as the Parish Council’s (PC’s) were the first line of governance in villages and had the background and information that would help wards generally. Until Parish Councils had seen full details of the contracts, to enable them to make a fully informed decision on their involvement, no decision would be made at today’s meeting.

Officers confirmed that the new model of neighbourhood working arose out of the Localism Bill. This proposed the devolution of power to smaller groups in the community, working with the voluntary sector to deliver the priorities of individual wards, ultimately saving money as budgets reduced.

A Parish Councillor pointed out that he personally had not seen any details of the new neighbourhood working arrangements. He emphasised the importance of providing information to PC’s on monies available together with information on what was required of the PC’s.

The Neighbourhood Manager went onto explain that there would be no changes in relation to grass cutting and ground maintenance in the ward, this financial year, to prevent double taxation issues. She also confirmed that further information would be provided to Parish Council’s to allow them to make an informed decision on their involvement with the contracts.

Ward Members were then asked to agree the schemes to be funded through the Ward Committee for 2012/13.

The Chair explained that funding had now been split into three pots:

·        Ward Budgets:  Each ward had an allocation to use as grant funding to commission local voluntary and community organisations to meet identified needs (Strensall Ward Committee had  budget of £3,260 for 2012-13)

·        Other Voluntary Sector Support:  Funding to support those voluntary sector organisations that provide services to more than one ward and that are currently forced to apply for a plethora of individual ward committee grants.  It was not intended that this fund would be open to Council services such as Street Sport; however, it is proposed that in the first year only, whilst the Ward Credits pot was being established, Council services would be allowed to bid.

Your Consortium had won the tender to administer the schemes according to the Council’s criteria and priorities and would provide support to the recipient organisations including accessing additional funding / revenue sources, helping them to become more sustainable.

·        Ward Credits:  A “credits pot” to be allocated to identified wards to be used to commission new services, either from within the Council or from other partners / sectors, to deliver on the Ward priorities. 

For the Strensall Ward, the Chair confirmed that, with a much reduced fund, only organisations situated within the ward would now be eligible to bid for funding. The following schemes would be funded through the Ward Committee for 2012/13:

·        KidzKlub, grant of £500 towards establishing a youth club in Strensall

·        River Foss Society, a grant of £945 towards the replacement of the footbridge at Strensall Village and two information boards about the flora and forna along the riverbank

·        Hurst Hall Community Play programme, a grant of £1,000 towards buying outdoor equipment

·        Earswick Scented Garden,  £315 grant towards providing shaded seating and additional flagstones

·        Earswick Village Hall, a grant of £500 towards upgrading the chairs in the Hall

Organisations were encouraged to make bids to ‘Your Consortium’ for services and equipment, specifying details of what they required together with supporting reasons.

Members also expressed concerns at the loss of funding to the Youth Service which they felt was short sighted in the long term.

Following discussion it was

RESOLVED:                That Ward Members agree the allocation of ward funding as detailed above.

REASON:                     To enable ward grant funding to be allocated to local ward schemes for the forthcoming year.