New Funding Opportunities for Local Community Groups Agreed

Yesterday evening the Cabinet of the Liberal Democrat - Conservative Coalition of Reading Borough Council agreed new criteria and process for allocating £181k of new funding to voluntary and community groups in Reading £81k of the grant funding will be revenue and £100k capital funding.

This follows the decision on 17 January to agree the budget allocation for grants 2011/2012 and the setting of the overall budget of the Council on 22 February 2011 when the Coalition administration of the Council agreed to increase funding to the local voluntary sector - in marked contrast to other councils across the country.

This approach has won praise from the National Association of Voluntary and Community Associations and The Spectator magazine which recently described Reading as 'a model council'.

New revenue and capital funding streams have been created to distribute funding to community and voluntary sector groups in Reading which support the priorities of  the Council which include:

• Better value for our residents
• Fairness for all our residents
• Pride in our town and ambition for its future
• Innovation in all aspects of the Council to bring about positive change

I was involved in 2009 in a CCEA Scrutiny Panel Review of the way Grant Aid was allocated to voluntary organisations in Reading. This called for greater transparency and flexibility in the process. It also concluded that funding decisions should be more closely linked to the Council's overall priorities.

As I said at Cabinet last night, I am strongly in favour of this revised approach to grant funding decisions - after all, it is public money and we need to be able to justify every penny and pound that we spend locally.

This is important to increase public confidence in what the Council does both as a public body and as a local authority.

It is also importan to ensure the process for applying for grant funding is opened up to ensure it is as accessible as possible to all groups - not just a select few who understand how the process works or who perhaps benefited from funding in the past.

It has been necessary to improve Council processes in relation to grant funding: when Labour ran the Council there was a woeful lack of transparency and accountability in the way in which grants were allocated.

Under the new approach to funding, subject to Cabinet's decision there will be 4 grant rounds for groups to 'bid' for - in June, August, November and February for revenue grants: and 2 rounds in August and February for capital grants.

Following each round, in the interests of maximum transparency and accountability a Decision Book will be published providing details of proposed grant awards. Each application deadline and the budget balances will be clearly publicised through the Council's website and Borough Council's Funding Digest publication.

Grants will be non-recurring (i.e. for one year only) and in order to be granted applicants must provide evidence to the Council of majority benefit to residents of Reading Borough Council and value for money:

• Small Community Grants - Budget £20,000
• Large Community Grants - Budget £81,000
• Capital Grants - Budget £100,000

The first category of grants is designed to support small projects including start up costs and events at neighbourhood level.

The second category of grants will be allocated to groups that demonstrate they are helping to address the Council's priorities of reducing child poverty, increasing community capacity and celebrity diversity.

I am particularly pleased to see the Council supporting community efforts to reduce poverty - this is a critical issue for us in Reading and something that Labour did too little to address when they were in power.

As my colleague Cllr Kirsten Bayes said in the meeting, with 1 in 5 children in our area living in poverty we believe strongly that the Council must look at everything it does to try to reduce poverty. This is something that the Liberal Democrats are firmly committed to doing.


The third category is for capital grants to local groups that are responsible for not for profit buildings or wish to improve their local environment and quality of life. For example, funding could go to building alterations and extensions, building equipment, and local area enhancement of a capital nature.

When councils across England are cutting funding to the voluntary sector, it sends a very positive message that here in Reading the Lib Dem-Conservative Coalition is looking at new ways to support the efforts of community groups and volunteers who work so hard to improve local neighbourhoods and the lives of local people.

I really hope that local groups come forward and take advantage of these new opportunities.

'Citizen Eric' gets it right on blogging

Thanks to Mark Pack for drawing my attention to this announcement by the Department for Communities and Local Government:-

'Councils should open up their public meetings to local news 'bloggers' and routinely allow online filming of public discussions as part of increasing their transparency, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said today.

To ensure all parts of the modern-day media are able to scrutinise Local Government, Mr Pickles believes councils should also open up public meetings to the 'citizen journalist' as well as the mainstream media, especially as important budget decisions are being made.

Local Government Minister Bob Neill has written to all councils urging greater openness and calling on them to adopt a modern day approach so that credible community or 'hyper-local' bloggers and online broadcasters get the same routine access to council meetings as the traditional accredited media have.'

The letter sent today reminds councils that local authority meetings are already open to the general public, which raises concerns about why in some cases bloggers and press have been barred.'

Good on the much-maligned Mr Pickles! I find it pretty shocking that some local councils have ben banning bloggers and press from their meetings (and thinking they could get away with it).

That has never happened in Reading, I'm pleased to say.

I have been tweeting from Council meetings and blogging for a little while now - most recently the Council's important Budget meeting. This has got up a few people's noses but reporting events in this way is now pretty much the norm amongst counciillors.

The online political debate in Reading has grown from what it was when I began blogging and is now pretty lively with most political parties represented. I think this is healthy for local democracy.

I would like to see more 'citizen journalists' attend local meetings and report on events. One of the best is Oranjepan who runs the reliable and well-informed  Reading List site which aggregates local Berkshire blogs. I also enjoy Reading Roars and Bracknell Blog.

The new Coalition Administration of Reading Borough Council implemented a social media strategy as part of our plans to open up the processes of the Council and engage the public.

That said I think we do need to do more to reach out to people and involve them more in decision-making. For example I would like to see the Council introduce web-casting as soon as a cost-effective solution can be found.

Open Government

Yesterday evening the Leader and Deputy Leader of Reading Borough Council's Coalition administration in Reading tabled the following motion. I drafted the motion. It reads:

"In line with the Coalition Agreement agreed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Groups in May 2010, this Council is committed to conducting its business with greater openness and transparency to increase public confidence in the activities of the Council.

This Council is also committed to ensuring every penny of Council Tax payers money is spent wisely and for the benefit of residents.

This Council rejects those policies and practices adopted by the previous Labour administration which sought to spend Council Taxpayers money furthering narrow political interests.

This Council therefore pledges in line with the principles of open, good government to:

• Publish invoices relating to payments over £500 on its website every quarter

• Publish details of the salaries of senior staff on its website

• Adopt clear and transparent policies for commissioning (so residents have a clear understanding what services are commissioned and why)"

This motion was agreed by Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors.

All Labour councillors voted against it.Below is the speech I wrote in support of the motion.

Given the late hour it was tabled I was only able to give part of it:-

"The roots of this motion lie in reinforcing and revivifying the following key values of local democracy

• Transparency

• Accountability

• Governing in the public interest

As councillors we should seek to govern by these principles or risk losing the trust of those who put us here.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” - so said Louis Brandeis in 1913.

“Restoring transparency is not only the surest way to achieve results, but also to earn back trust in government” –

“Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing” – so said Obama

As the Leader of the Council has observed it is not our own money, this Council is spending,

It is the public’s money.

Yet for years, many of the activities of this Council including its expenditure have remained a mystery to local people.

Information, and by extension power, has rested in too few hands.

You don’t have to look very far to find examples of this –

• Remember when scrutiny panels were chaired by administration councillors?

•  Remember when grant funding decisions were made by the Lead Councillor in consultation with officers?

This happened under the previous, Labour administration of the Council.

I believe strongly that the public have a right to know what we are spending their hard-earned taxes on and to use that information to challenge us.

If we want local people to trust us then we must trust them with the information.

This is particularly important in an era when there is likely to be less money around and more competition for public funds.

Under the watch of the last Labour government public perception of parliamentarians slumped to an all time low.

The widespread belief that MPs were “in it for themselves” was hugely damaging to public confidence in our democracy both nationally and locally.

Closer to home there have been examples recently of spending by the previous administration of this Council which would have.

The Coalition Administration of this Council has sought from the word go to inject Council business with a greater openness and transparency – as our coalition agreement stated.

We in this administration have sought to shine a light on spending, processes and decisions which for years have been kept hidden.

- Take for example my colleague Cllr Willis’s thorough investigation of what went on in Shinfield Road.

- Or the uncovering of millions of pounds worth of secret spending on consultants by the previous Labour administration of this Council, uncovered by my colleague Cllr Epps in recent days.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the way we have reformed the grant funding process.

3 years ago I jointly tabled a motion with Cllr Townend on this very subject.

We were roundly attacked for it by Labour councillors keen to defend the status quo.

We are opening up the process to new groups and giving everyone a fair chance of bidding for funding.

This is decidedly pro-public interest and anti-vested interest.

I hope all councillors can back this motion and work together to restore trust in our politics."

Progress on greater transparency in Reading

Reading Borough Council announced today that all Council spending over £500 is now accessible via the Council's website. Visit the Council's new transparency page to view details.

I have been a Councillor for over four years and it's the first time I can remember this level of detailed information being available to the public (and indeed councillors!). It definitely never happened under the previous Labour administration.

I think this is a positive step and it should make everyone more aware of what public money is being spent on by the Council. I hope it will lead to better decisions and more informed residents.

At a local level the new administration is committed to making the activities of the Council more open and accessible to the public, and to be as clear as possible about what we are spending public money on and why.

The Coalition Agreement signed by Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors in Reading says:

"We will promote greater transparency in local government in Reading, to improve community confidence in the council"

At the moment the data is in very much raw form but I understand from the Department of Communities and Local Government that more guidance will be forthcoming to councils about how they should present information which I hope will make this information more useful to residents.