Issue - meetings

This report advises Members of the applications received for financial support from City Strategy’s voluntary sector funding budget for 2008/2009.  Members are requested to maintain existing three year funding agreements and to consider officer recommendations to award a number of one-year funding grants and Discretionary Rate Relief awards.

Advice of the Advisory Panel

That the Executive Leader be advised to :

(i)                 Approve Option A as set out in paragraph 24 of the report and detailed in Annex 3;

(ii)               Approve the additions to Option A set out in paragraph 28 if the additional growth bid is approved for the 2008/09 budget;

(iii)             Recommend that Officers review the options for making the most effective use of the City Strategy funding budget during 2008 and that the proposals are brought back to Members in due course.

Decision of the Executive Leader

RESOLVED :That the advice of the Advisory Panel be accepted and endorsed.

REASON :                 (i)         This provides continuity and eliminates the impact of any reductions in funding. These organisations have been identified as high priority as they meet some or all of the criteria for funding;

(ii)               This will ensure that an inflationary increase is applied to all grants and will enable additional grant funding to be awarded to organisations;

(iii)             This is so the most effective use can be made of the City Strategy voluntary sector funding budget in the future. It is recognised that the difficulty in funding new applications is an issue that needs to be included in this review.

This report advised Members of the applications received for financial support from City Strategy’s voluntary sector funding budget for 2008/2009. Members were requested to maintain existing three year funding agreements and to consider officer recommendations to award a number of one-year funding grants and Discretionary Rate Relief awards.

Written representations were received from Cllr Crisp stating her disappointment that the York Older Peoples Assembly is yet again not supported by the council.

The report presented three options for consideration :

A.            Maintain the existing one year funding awards at the same level as 2007/08, and award Discretionary Rate Relief to all organisations who were successful in 2007/08 plus York Racial Equality Network and York Supervised Child Contact Service (Annex 3).

B.             Reduce the existing one year funding awards by 20%, and award Discretionary Rate Relief to all organisations who were successful in 2007/08 plus York Racial Equality Network and York Supervised Child Contact Service. In addition award the remaining grant funding of £6,420 (made up of the 20% saving on existing one year funding awards) to one or more of the four new applications. 

C.             Redistribute the available budget between all 10 applications for grant funding, including the 4 organisations without existing funding agreements, and the 11 applications for Discretionary Rate Relief.

The Labour Group reserved their position for Budget Council.

Advice of the Advisory Panel

That the Executive Leader be advised to :

(i)                 Approve Option A as set out in paragraph 24 of the report and above and detailed in Annex 3;

(ii)               Approve the additions to Option A set out in paragraph 28 if the additional growth bid is approved for the 2008/09 budget;

(iii)             Recommend that Officers review the options for making the most effective use of the City Strategy funding budget during 2008 and that the proposals are brought back to Members in due course.¹

Decision of the Executive Leader

RESOLVED :That the advice of the Advisory Panel be accepted and endorsed.

REASON :                 (i)         This provides continuity and eliminates the impact of any reductions in funding. These organisations have been identified as high priority as they meet some or all of the criteria for funding;

(ii)               This will ensure that an inflationary increase is applied to all grants and will enable additional grant funding to be awarded to organisations;

(iii)             This is so the most effective use can be made of the City Strategy voluntary sector funding budget in the future. It is recognised that the difficulty in funding new applications is an issue that needs to be included in this review.