Grants and Funding

Maddy the dog and I did an excellent impression of Torville and Dean as we braved the freeze on our morning run accross Hastings Country Park. I go into work later today as last night I was attending a meeting of the Hastings Borough Council Cabinet which was considering a report on the support to the voluntary sector including a recommendation to cut the small grants element which has been a resource (some would say a 'lifeline') to a range of small community groups for years. There is talk of efficiency savings in the air but the only reason advanced by the Council for cutting the scheme was the cost of administering it being disproportionate to the amount of money involved. We put in a last minute offer to administer the scheme for free for the next 2 years thus reducing the Councils costs to nil. Strangely this was not taken up. Other puzzling features of the report include a bewildering approach to Full Cost Recovery which was advanced by the Council as its new funding approach. In reality, this has meant that the Council have failed to include even an inflationary increase for groups in the second year of funding. Makes you wonder sometimes. All in all it has been a weird old process the transition towards the commissioning process which has arrived at virtually the same results as the old grant aid regime. As one of Chrisopher Colombus's crew might have asked at the end of their journey in 1492 "Did we really have to go all the way round just to end up where we started?"