It's the end of the world as we know it

Perhaps not the end of the world but at least the end of the financial year as we know it. A strange administrative phenomonen which results in a range of service providers realising that they have unspent cash in their coffers and then deciding that the vol sector is the place to utilise. No problem there but it does result in a lot of of running around and frantic e-mails about service level agreements and what-not. Apart from this it is also the busiest time of the eyar for the training I undertake for the University of Brighton. I only work there about 5 days per year but 3 of the days are in a single week which means I am on a train from Hastings to Falmer. 2 days community development and half a day teaching a module on young people and the law.

Wednesday saw me to the first meeting of the advisory group which is advising the Council on how to spent the money it has been given from the Working Neighbourhoods Fund. The background to this is that, in a masterstroke of strategic planning, the Borough Council planned on the basis that Hastings would no longer feature in the indices of deprivation (wrong) and would no longer receive additinal funding as a result (also wrong). It restructured its own activities creating massive disruption on the basis of its earlier analysis (completeley wrong). As a consequnce when it is announced that Hastings is still a poor place and will receive money we need to embark on a process to allocate it. There is much scraching of heads over this (profoundly wrong).

The Council are at pains to point out that it is the body who will decide on the allocation of Working Neighbourhoods. This is a good job as they have raided the till, as it were, to support its own restructuring. They have also convened an advisory group or partners to help in this process. This is either a genuine attempt at partnership or a cynical attempt to justify a series of decisions which have already been taken - depending on how you view it.

I attend the meeting in the conference room at Priory Meadow shopping centre. It is an eclectic discussion - a few ideas but no real progress on the complex issues we have to address. I leave somewhat frustrated that the key issues remain unaddressed. In Hastings we are rich in data and the measurement of poverty but poor on analysis (a point I make at the meeting). We know the impact of what is happening but not the reasons for it or, most crucially, what to do about it. The employment and economic problems of Hastings are not sudden (they have arisen over more than 3 decades) but there is a struggle to diagnose them or attempt to articulate what can be done - even with a cash injection of over £3m. For what seems like the 50th time I talk about the importance of the third sector and the need to understand the informal economy in order to plan a way forward for the Town. I leave the meeting unable to feel that a single decision has been taken or that a clear way forward is within our grasp. On a slightly more positive side some transitional arrangements are planed to take forward some of our funding. It has been neccessary to highlight to the local authority the inconsistency of their approach taking lonog term decisions over their own structure but offering a mere 12 weeks funding to the sector. More of this is accessible via our website if you really want to know the details.

I am somewhat cynical over the Council's ability to respond to reported breaches of the compact. We have one already filed which has so far taken 9 months and still awaits a response. I have briefed Alfie my 11 year old grandson about this issue - in case I am no longer around when a reply is received. He in turn has given me an undertaking to pass the information to his as yet unborn children should the issue not be resolved. So the compact breach of 2007 will be passed down father to son through the generations until a reply is received from Hastings Borough Council.

Here is a UCLA high school students personal interpretation of the REM song from which we derive our lyric reference. Not bad in my humble opinion so enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0c6VnT-TLw