Transcript

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the meeting. My name is Councillor Jeremy Ambash and I'm the chair of the grants subcommittee and scrutiny committee. Members of the committee, I will now call your names in alphabetical order. Please switch on your microphone to confirm your attendance. So Councillor Angela Graham, I think I've been -- she's running late, but we think she's expected. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Councillor Dan Hamilton. Good evening and good to see such strong balance representation on the committee. Councillor Lindsay Hedges. Good evening. Thank you, chair. Councillor Lindsay Hedges of Ballinwood. Good. Councillor Norman Marshall. We've got apologies from Councillor Marshall. Councillor Jack Mayocas. Here. Councillor Joe Rigby. I'm here, thank you. Councillor Steve Warrell. Here and balancing out from Battersea. We have a number of officers present who will introduce themselves as they address the committee. So declarations of interest, number one, are there any declarations of either pecuniary, other registrable or non-registrable interests from committee members? No? No? Okay. Thank you very much. Item 2, minutes of the 5th of February. Does the committee agree the minutes of the previous meeting held on the 5th of February can be signed as a correct record? Yep. Is that correct? Agree the minutes, but do have a quick question if that's all right. Because we agreed something early on in the year or do you want me to wait until you get to the- No, no. If you want to ask a question from the minutes do Councillor- And so it's more of a general one that I think I've asked for quite some time and I know Councillor Hamilton did when he was the spokesperson as well. But we asked for what the monitoring that's being done for grants that have been awarded. Do you remember that we, I think I spoke to you Councillor Ambash about it. Just wondered, because it must have been a long time now and you were going to collate some data with Councillor Akinola I think. I'm glad you mentioned it. Yeah, so just a quick reminder because I know that it was a long time ago we talked about it and you said you were going to do like an annual checkup or something and then provide some data. Thank you. The first meeting of the year was going to have the details and I've discussed this with officers. We didn't have the first meeting of the year because of the general election. So if you go to page 197, you'll see Wandsworth-Grant-Find-Outcome report from the grant subcommittee. And I just was hoping we would just note that, but if you wanted to comment on it, officers brought it to my attention when I hadn't read right through to the end of the papers. But there is- >> And to be fair, I didn't actually receive any papers. So yes, so just to let you to note that. But can we note that and can I suggest to any members of the committee, if you want to comment on that report, can you correspond directly with officers? Councillor Hamilton. Thank you, Chair. I didn't receive my papers either. I did manage to find them online. There was a printed copy in the members' room. But if it would be possible to please make sure they are sent out on time, that would be great, because it's far easier to review them in a paper form. I think than on the screen. And similarly, when you do view the individual grants online, it would be useful if there could be one file that all of the applications are in, rather than to click through all of them individually as individual documents. But I'm sure that could be done fairly easily, thank you. I'm very sorry you haven't had the papers. You're not the first two to have taken this out with me. And I have had a word with Ms. Hickey, and she will have a word with the problem with the poster room. She understood that they were being sent out last week. But there seems to have been a failure. But she'll be following that up. But sorry that you haven't had them. That's the minutes. We're on to voluntary sector cost of living grants fund, round one, paper 24.260. And Harriet Steele will introduce this item. I'm Harriet Steele, the voluntary sector partnership manager for the council. So this is the cost of living grant fund. This is in two rounds for this year. 150,000 pounds available across the two rounds. And we're looking at round one at this committee. Round one, the focus was on community spaces and food provision in order to get projects up and running in time for the winter months and the colder weather. Applicants could apply for between 2,500 and 15,000 pounds. We received 15 applications coming in at just over 147,000 pounds. And we are recommending six applications for a total of 61,375 pounds. This is the sort of third year of cost of living funding in various forms. We had warm spaces funding initially and then cost of living funding. So officers have been looking at the projects coming in to make sure that they are clearly supporting people directly affected by the cost of living and trying to help move them from point of crisis to more sustainable position. Thank you very much, Ms. Steele. Any questions on paper 24-260? Councilor Hedges. Thank you for doing that and all the hard work that you do. Mine's more of a general comment because I notice there's quite a few there that were rejected. Sorry, it's two questions actually. One, are we giving any of these organizations any help to help them complete these applications because I looked at some of them and thought they probably just haven't been advised to provide the right information and that's all. And then were rejected. But then my second point is because there are quite a lot more grant funds now, have you increased in capacity in terms of head count and how are you managing to look at all of these and just making sure that we're giving organizations the best chance at getting these particular applications? Thank you. Talking about the officer capacity to respond to the applications, are you? How about we increase the capacity of what? The head count of the team that look at the grant applications. Okay. That's what I thought you were asking. Yeah. Yeah. Steele. So on the first point, we have all the information about the grants online and we ran a couple of meet the funder workshops so they're online meetings where officers will take people through the application step by step and often there's time at the end to go into specific questions that the applicants put forward. We also offer to have separate conversations with them to look at aspects of that application to help support and tailor them towards the grant funds that we have available and the contact details of the officers are available online to contact any time with any further questions. So there was a whole sort of package of support around the grant fund that we put in place to try and help people provide the best applications they could for the fund. I'm all right in saying from previous committees where the committees said this might be a good application if they were given a bit more help, there are some organizations you've reached out to to help them reapply. Yes. Yes, that's correct. Yeah. Do you want to ask Councilor Hedge's second question which was that head count in terms of -- Sorry. Just to say one more thing. Just because I was really disappointed to see how many good organizations were rejected -- Can you say something about the officer head count responding? Yeah. In terms of the officer head count, we haven't increased the head count. We're able to at this time manage their volume of applications within the current capacity. We do work closely with democratic services when we look at the planning of committees and factor in the timings needed by officers to look through and assess the applications fully. Yeah, sure. I think it's a fair question because we have been extremely busy with the extra grants that we've had through cost of living last year this year. So I think the team's worked extremely well. As Harriet says, we haven't had an increase of staff. We've had cost of living funded posts just to support the team with some of this work. But, you know, we work in partnership, as we said, with dem services, and we've got a couple of other officers in the council that come in and help and support when we've got high volumes. But it is something that we are mindful of. Are there any other questions on 24-260 paper introducing the cost of living round one? No? So I suggest that we go through the recommendations. If we've got agreement one way or the other, we move to it quickly because we've got quite a lot of applications. But there may be a few that we want to particularly focus on. So the recommended one is number one, Age UK, Wandsworth. Yes, Councillor Warrell. Just a clarification, the project says that it will benefit 20 older residents each week. I'm just wondering what is the total amount of residents that they think would be supported by this? Because it can be rare that it would be the same 20 people each week. Probably that's not the case. But it would be useful if you could just get clarification back from as to what they think the total would be. Yes, thank you, Councillor. Officers haven't been able to clarify with Age UK the number of people overall that would be supported. But from the application, the assumption that we've made is that it will be different people. And that is based on the fact in the application they talk about opening up the sessions to everyone in the borough over 60. They talk about being widely advertised and their publicity campaign around that. And they've also got two sessions that will be held outside of the normal sessions in the Gwyneth Morgan Centre and they give the example of the Hindu Society Centre. So from that, the assumption is that it will be a variety of older people that will be attending and more than just 20 people. Do you think you could follow that up? Because I know you haven't been able to talk to them today and then let Councillor Worrall know. That was my assumption when I read the paper, that there are 20 places, but there are many more than 20 people. But it would be helpful to that be clarified. Is the committee agreed that we would take the recommendation to agree, okay? So number two, balanced salvation armies is not recommended, agree? And then blind aid is not recommended is number three. And actually a number of these are a bit -- didn't focus particularly on the cost of living, though they might be good projects. But Councillor Hamilton. Thank you, chair. That's precisely the point I was going to make. Looking through, I think it's the several sport for health, state art, blind aid, these are good projects I think could have been passed elsewhere, but I just think maybe there's something failing there in terms of the way that the fund is being communicated externally. I know that things have been done in terms of making sure there have been sort of workshops people to come along to and you can probably say it until you're blue in the face, you're always going to receive some applications that don't meet the right criteria. But I don't know if we just need to be a little bit more explicit, a little bit harsher almost in terms of the cons on this to make sure that you're not receiving lots of these applications and there are several of them tonight which I think could have fallen into another bucket. Mr. Murdoch, do you want to respond to that? Sure. Thank you. So Chris Murdoch, the senior grants development officer. So in undertaking these meet the funds events, it was one of the things we really stressed and what we explained was our experience last year in assessing the grants, quite a lot of the applications were quite vague and one of the things in putting this fund together and talking to cabinet members, we really wanted to focus on those affected by cost of living and it was one of the things we really stressed. So we can say to people and we can say it repeatedly, but it's trying to get that message across and how people bring that back to us, but it was a point that we were quite explicit and I think harsh was maybe not quite that level, but we made it really explicit. It was one of the things that we really wanted to focus on and certainly talking to people about their experience locally, I think in many places it was there, but they just weren't expressing it when they came back in the application. We agreed not to recommend number three. Okay. Number four, similarly not recommended. Agreed. Number five, Doddington and Rollo, not recommended. With the roof garden, again, it sounded a good roof garden project, but it wasn't so focused on cost of living, but still, Councillor Warrell. Just to clarify on the application form that the ward is actually Bassey Park and not Shaftesbury in Queenstown. Jim Ward boundaries may be caught up with that. Thanks, Councillor Warrell. Good. So we've agreed to not recommend five. Six, estate arts, CRC not recommended. Agreed. Seven, Catherine Lowe settlement is recommended. Yeah, Councillor Hedges. More general question on KLS, because KLS comes up an awful lot, and I know I've asked this question before, but do you have like a spreadsheet that tracks everything where you can see how many times you've awarded an organization a grant or whether they're receiving any other money from the council? I'm just concerned that, you know, we're giving an awful lot of money to KLS. It comes up virtually every grants meeting, and I know there's other monies going to them as well. So do you have a spreadsheet? And can you share that with us so that we can have a look at the analytics, please? Mr. Murdoch. Sorry, yes. In terms of the grants which we manage, yes, we do have that, but obviously what we don't know necessarily is other funding which across the council may be commissions and other things. We don't necessarily know that. We do try to find out where we can, and often it's one of the questions in the application form so we get an idea and then we do talk to officers, but one of the things we do discuss between us is that we don't have that full picture necessarily. So it's one of the issues that, you know, we're aware of. Yes. Ms. Steele. Yeah, just to say that that is an issue that we're aware of, as Ms. Proust says. We do within our grants directorate have that ability to cross check, and we also do, as part of the assessment process, liaise with other teams that do fund, so that's part of that sort of built into the assessment process. Part of the wider work that we are looking at is doing a piece around mapping across the council, but we're just in the early stages of that at the moment, but I agree that it would be helpful to understand that full piece of funding across the whole council. Thank you very much for that. And would it be possible for you to share the work in future when you do it? And also just to say I'm really concerned about this because we have a lot more grant funds now than we did when we first started a few years ago, we just had the Wandsworth grant fund, now I think there's like four or five. So for us to do our, you know, to properly scrutinize it would be helpful to see who's getting what and when, and which grant fund, and also the extra layer on top that you mentioned about other monies from the council as well, it would be good to see that bird's eye view of what's going on. Thank you. I see no reason why you can't share the information with Councilor Hedges in relation to this grants committee and KLS. It's a whole other piece of work getting information across the council, but if you want to have that information about KLS and any other members of the committee. Sorry. Just to be clear, it's not just KLS, I'd like to see every organization. And by the way, I really do support what KLS does. I think it's a really great organization. It's just one that pops up, but there's a lot of others as well. It's just because we got to that one. Councilor Hedges, you originally asked if you could see the KLS information. If you're asking for every other organization, I think that's a whole different bag of tricks. Ms. Boagali, would you like -- that will be spreadsheets and spreadsheets, but Ms. Boagali, would you like to comment? Yeah. So just to say, obviously, we acknowledged earlier there's quite a lot of work that officers do in terms of assessing the applications. I think the last round was around 52. So I would suggest -- I know you mentioned KLS earlier. I was going to say that maybe online, with what they submit, they'll have a list of all the various grants and income that they've had, like most charities do. So that might be helpful just to go online and have a look at that. What we would certainly do with these grants, as Harriet has said, is look across as much as we can. But especially the grants that we manage, we would look across to see what's there. I'm not sure it would be very practical and quite resource intensive for my officers to start tracking all the organizations. I think they've got a criteria around due diligence, and they ask the questions according to this grant. But I think if you've got specific organizations, I think maybe they might have the information online that might help. Sorry, I can't be more helpful than that. Councillor Warrell first, and then Councillor Mio Kast. As a relative -- well, as a complete newbie to this committee, this is, I guess, a bit more of an existential question, but isn't the fact of having individual funds that have their own criteria, doesn't that mean that each application should be judged on -- this is a question, not a challenge -- doesn't it mean they should be based on that criteria? So if you were to take a particular interest in organizations that had applied to several funds or elsewhere, that might influence a decision, but really, the decision should only be based on the criteria for that fund. I don't know. With one of the offices. Can I just say one thing very quickly? My point is there's a lot of -- it's just more of a due diligence, and to be aware, you know, from a bird's eye view, what's going out the door, because there's so many grant funds now, and there's so many applications. I'm trying to be helpful in response, but you made a point that we haven't had any extra offices to deal with the extra work we've been doing. Now you're asking for lots more information. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for. Yeah, but what you -- but every organization that comes to this committee, you wanting information over the last year about that, or what are you asking? Because I think most of those grant funds have only just come about now, like this year. I don't know exactly what you're asking for. Is it how many -- sorry. Are you asking for how many funds they have applied for and been successful, in addition to how much money they have received from other sources of funding from the council? Correct. For every organization? Yes. I think Ms. Workbally said that would be a tremendous amount of work that is not possible within the resources available. Is that -- Absolutely. In terms of due diligence, it's proportionate. We conduct grants as well. I think we've heard from the sector broadly through the wider work we've done with the VCS, where they've been quite loud and clear around, you know, being proportionate around that. With the grants, it's, you know, the amount and level of information that we ask for them. So we are trying to have a clear balance around having a very smooth, swift, proportionate process for them to apply, especially for the small groups, and then, obviously, the monitoring, et cetera. So it's not so overburdensome. A lot of these grants are with, as you know, volunteer organizations and volunteers. So I think the due diligence that we conduct for these grants, I think, is proportionate to the grants that we've got. We do look and check to see, for example, if there are other grants that they've applied for. But my offices will specifically apply the criteria, especially with cost of living. Obviously, there's been a shift. We do apply the criteria for that particular round as we do. But I think anything broader than that, as I've said, it would just be so much more work for us to do. Councilor Rigby is trying to get in. Yeah. I mean, this was -- I used to be on this committee last time. Come back, Councilor Rigby. Well, thank you. Well, in opposition. And -- Me, too. And it was the same then that the work is to look at each one. I think just looking at Katherine Lowe Settlement, because they do have a property, they are bound to put more things on and, therefore, have more scope to ask for grants than a place that is renting property. Do you know what I mean? And they're so well-known in the community. They are a -- you know, it's very popular and they do some wonderful -- and they're so efficient with the money that they do get. We need to move on, but I'm quite happy to have a further discussion outside the committee if that would be helpful. Are we agreeing recommendation item 7, Katherine Lowe Settlement? Item 8, Living Truth, CIC, is recommended. Agreement, yeah. Item 9 is Mother and Child Welfare Organization, which is not recommended. It's one that I think there might be further discussion, because it's quite an interesting project and there isn't a lot coming from Tooting, but I think it's not presented as a cost-of-living project as well. So if there's any way we can reach out to them -- [ Inaudible ] Good, item 10 is recommended, PCC of St. Michael's and St. Stephen's Church, a new community hub on the Accroydon, yeah, agreed. Racket's Cube, number 11, is recommended up to 15K, agreed. Report for health is not recommended. Number 12, agreed, 13, SW15 Women's Network, although it says in the report that it's not focused on the cost of living as much as it should be, there is an aspect that is moved in that direction with the engagement of CAB as part of the welfare benefits and advice. So I think there is something in that that is very important and that there's an overlap between domestic abuse and the cost of living in terms of women going through that and needing benefits. And I just wonder if the Committee have a view on this, but I thought we might consider it. Mr. Worrall. I'd like to support your suggestion to relook at this. I think part of the problem with this is the way it's actually written. I think it's written in such a way that it leads you down one particular way, but what you can see is that the work that is being done is about linking in with the CAB, and we know that members of this community often come from low-income backgrounds as well. So in this one, I would actually suggest, because of that overlap and the way it's actually written, that we reconsider this and grant the award. Councillor Hedges. No, you were the first. Completely agree with you. I really support this cause. It's amazing, and I agree with Councillor Worrall. I think it's just been worded incorrectly, and again, I think it is quite confusing for some organizations, cause there's so many different pots of, like grants pots, and I think this is just an oversight, clearly. This is great work, and I'm happy to support it. Councillor Hamilton. No, just a general point as well. I fully support looking at this again, and I'm also pleased to see the applications from the Aladia community, who I know also suffer significant discrimination inside the broader Muslim community as well. So I think it's a very good project, I think it meets a requirement that we do have. Are we agreeing that we recommend item 13, SW15, women's network? I think we might have a discussion with people leading the network about how other aspects of the cost of living might be included in their program. Okay, thank you. Item 14, Arty Crafty Crescent Club. Agreed that we don't recommend, yep. 15 is recommended, Wandsworth Carers Centre. Yes, agreed. So we've dealt with all the cost of living. Just wanted to establish from the introduction report, there was a little bit of headroom on the finance. The fact that we've agreed one extra project, is that going to cause any problem with the finance? No, it's not going to, okay. Thank you very much. Good. I think Bruce Murdoch's going to introduce 24261, the Wandsworth Grant Fund, round 27. And I think Ms. Steele is going to add an addendum, yep. Thank you very much, Chair. So this is the Wandsworth Grant Fund, round 28, so this is the second round of this financial year. So we had 20 eligible applications requesting £177,031, and after assessment, officers are recommending a total of 76,856 to eight organizations. So if I can just draw attention to a few paragraphs on the main committee report, as we maybe just need a little bit more explanation. And if we draw your attention to paragraph 10, sorry, if we jump to paragraph 13, what's happening is, as members will be aware that the borough won the London Borough of Culture award from the mayor, and so what we've done in looking at the Wandsworth Grant Fund is that part of the budget is to do with arts and culture. So we've taken into consideration the recommendations in the previous round, round 26, and this round, that if all that's agreed, then there'll be a total of £37,000 and 40 left to contribute to ongoing arts and cultures projects, ongoing, and we'll manage that through the London Borough of Culture funding stream, and that was one of the things that was actually, that was agreed at the Finance Committee of last. So move to paragraph 17, so although that money is going out, some members have been with the committee for a while, you may remember that the council has an endowment fund which is lodged, it was managed by the London Community Foundation, and each year, towards the end of the year, we're able to bring the investment income to the council, and because the two funds are very, very similar, in terms of aims and objectives, we were allowed to add that onto the Wandsworth Grant Fund at the last round, and it's usually round about £25,000. So although we may be moving some money to the London Borough of Culture, we're not too worried because we know we've got that money to come towards it for the final round in February when you meet next, we're just working with the London Community Foundation to get that figure finalised, but we'll know that fairly soon. Lastly, if we move to the next paragraph, paragraph 18, which is the table of the tracking of the previous rounds, your members will note in rounds 21 and 22, which projects are about a year long, and actually the projects were finished, one of the things we're noting is that we've got projects, got five of each on track, we know that those projects are actually finished, we're not engaging with all these groups, and the problem is that although we know that the projects are finished, they actually haven't provided a final report for us. Sometimes that's because a lot of these organisations are very, very small, and sometimes people, staff who we've been engaging with have actually left, and it's a bit of a hiatus, and I think the same with rounds 23 and 24, so what we're hoping, we're undertaking some work to push people to try and get that number down so we'll actually significantly catch up with ourselves. We have made quite a lot of progress in previous rounds where there was a backlog, so we're making a bit of a push so that we can update and make sure we get those reports, which will help us do our annual reporting towards the end of this year and report back to members next year as well. So we know that some projects are a bit late, but we'll push that, and you've mentioned, so I was going to pick up the appendix, which the Chair mentioned earlier on, but please do have a read of that in your own time, and if you get any questions, do come back, and officers will try to answer that as much as possible. Ms Teal, did you want to add anything to what Mr Murdoch is saying? No, I don't think there's anything more to add, unless there's any questions on things in general. Yes. Any questions on Paper 261? Am I right, there's a little bit of headroom in terms of our indicative budget for tonight? Yes, so the way we do the indicative budget is we just take the full budget for the year, we take off the funding which is designated for the ones of that range and the ones of itself capacity grant, so it gives me a budget of just slightly under £300,000 for the year. We just split that between the three rounds, so the indicative budget just gives us a guide throughout the year of where we are, so we know that in the previous round we were under that available budget, again we're probably a bit under for this round as well, and because I'm always worried about when we get into the last round, how much money do we have, and as far as last year, some members might remember, we were actually very, very tight, and actually that's where the ones with community funds actually was helpful, but actually where we are at the moment, even with the London Borough of Culture coming in board, I'm fairly comfortable with where we are.

• Thank you, Mr. Murdoch, great, let's go to the first application, number one, Ballyman Tooting Community Association, back to the community awards 2025, yeah, Councillor Mayorkas.
• Yeah, I'm very familiar with their work, including prior to being a councillor, and I understand the officer recommendations, but I just wondered whether we could perhaps add a small percentage of what they asked for, maybe just to cover venue hire, and then they can raise additional money through ticketing or other things on that.
• Councillor Rigby.
• Yeah, I mean, this has obviously been running for years, and I'm wondering if there's any background on why they've needed to ask this particular year, it might be to do the cost of living, but I'd agree with Councillor Mayorkas about venue hire.
• Good, Mr. Murdoch, there is a little bit of background, do you want to add a little bit about Bacta?
• Yes, so from what we understand, Bacta have had a new committee this year, following off about governing the officers who supported over recent years, and they retired, the last grant we provided, in the notes, and the last grant that this committee provided was September 2016, where again, they asked for 5,000 pounds, and the committee at that time agrees a grant of 1,500 pounds for the committee hire, and they did note that maybe because it was an ongoing project, year on year, this fund is really not appropriate for that, so there was some understanding of the value of the project at the time, that members decided to award a smaller grant, so there's some precedent there, if members wish to follow that up.
• So are we in agreement with the recommendation with 1,500 for the venue hire, but we won't make a habit of doing this, they need to get their ongoing funding for future years, but okay. Thank you very much, committee.
• Number two, Baseless Fabric Theatre Limited is recommended, agreed, yep, three, Bertie Collective, translation, yeah, yeah, Councilor Rigby?
• Yeah, I think I'd need to know what the difference is between this one being recommended and this one not, and then there's a couple further on, it's basically the same type of thing, it's art in public, reason was for this not getting it.
• Mr. Murdock, would you like to respond?
• I think for the Bertie Collective, the part that was unclear, we could see that they were going to work with free TV organization over the early months, in terms of the development, but when we looked at the budget, the vast majority of the budget was actually to do the performance during the WAF period, so there's a bit of a disconnect between the budget and the description of what they were going to do, and it wasn't clear how involved the young people that they were going to work with in the early stages were then going to be involved in WAF, and so I think something like 970 pounds of the budget was to do with the workshop with the young people, but all the rest of it was to do with WAF, and overall, the arts team, for what they were doing, they felt that the activity was quite expensive as well, per head, so the arts team felt that it was probably more appropriate for them later to do some bit more development of the work, and to reapply to one of the WAF grants, which will come up later on in the year.
• We agreed with that, not to recommend three, but there'll be further discussion with the arts team about the WAF fringe, okay? For Kerry Gardens Community Growing Project, yes, Councillor Warren.
• Thank you. Whilst I'm in agreement with the decision here, I think Kerry Gardens, this is the second time they've actually applied to us for grants. I think Kerry Gardens is one of those that actually we need to be a lot more proactive in going to them, rather than expecting them to come to us. I know the committee and the Residence Association is going through a lot of change at the moment, and projects like this would be really good for them, but also they're the sort that actually do need a little bit of a nudge, a little bit of a push internally, just to help them with an application. So whilst I agree with this, my other recommendation would be is that we take a more proactive stance, and actually going to them and working with them around this particular one.
• I think that's very sensible, and what struck me when I looked through all the papers is the environment and the green agenda, although it's really important, doesn't seem to be coming forward with applications. So I agree with what Councillor Worrall said, but we're agreeing not to recommend at this stage, yeah? Okay. Elias Corner, Elias Network, not recommended, agreed. Forest School Number 6 of Trinity St. Mary's Primary, not recommended, agreed. KLS Arch Room Doors and Windows, not recommended.
• Is there anywhere else that can go to this disability, wheelchair access, is there anyone access for all?
• Yeah, okay, yeah, Councillor, Mr. Mayor.
• Actually, we've had a couple of applications and discussions with a number of organisations like this, and I think we had one with World Heart Beat as well recently. It's interesting that in the funding world nowadays, actually, it's one of those things which doesn't seem to be on the agenda, it seems to be one of those things that people think it's been dealt with a long time ago. So it's not an obvious thing in the grant world at the moment, however, there are, as I think KLS are picking up, there are, even within London, some funders who still do capital building projects, there's not as many as there used to be, but they are still there, and I know that this is just one project of many of which KLS is doing and updating the building, and it's about identifying the right people at the right time to do things. But it is a struggle nowadays to find particular funders for this, it's quite a difficult one these days.
• So there's nowhere we can find them?
• Certainly in my current knowledge, there's not somewhere obvious, I have had to look around both for World Heart Beat and others who have came to me, however, there might be, whether there's opportunities within a new ENSO fund, that's something that they could talk to officers about, something like that could be possible, although I know that ENSO's changed, but there are things like that that might be able to pop up, but I know that KLS are in discussions with other funders who do capital building work, so something might come up with something there.
• Yeah, okay, Councilor Worrall.
• I am aware that the City of London Guilds actually do have funding available for disability related projects, it's finding the right guild of, whether it's guild of carpenters, whatever it might be, but there is money there for some capital work around disability access, so it might be useful for them to look in that particular direction.
• Could you pass on your suggestion of ANSIL and the City of London, that would be helpful.
• This is just to say thank you, because I know in the past we've asked, can you put previous grants on the application form, and you have done it, and it's quite clear from this KLS one that we can see, so just a positive thank you from me.
• I think the previous grants are on all the ones worth, but not on the cost of living ones. Okay, that's agreed, and so we're now on number eight, recommended in full fast forward, Rosslyn Park FC. Any comments in agreement, yeah? Okay. Rotary Club of Battersea, Christmas Day, Rotary, yeah, Councilor Rigby, you got there first.
• Yeah, I'm really surprised, they're asking, I mean this used to be such a high donor event, I think Elson John was funding it at one point, so what's happened?
• Yeah, yeah, is it a bit less high profile with celeb, no, you don't know, okay, yeah, Councilor Warren, you wanted to come in now.
• I'm gonna ask the committee to re-look at this one. I think that whilst I recognize in the paper that we don't, we shouldn't be supporting refund applications and stuff that's been done in the past, I think this is one where we can, through making contribution to this, actually engage with them to plan around sustainability, to plan around their monitoring and evaluation processes, with a recognition that we also are clear to them that they can't come back to us, but I think this is one, considering the circumstances of what's being asked, and this is a way, sometimes we need to think of how we can use the grant funds to actually help organizations develop and move forward, and this is one maybe we should, I'd like the committee to rethink.
• Yeah, yeah, Councilor Hamilton.
• Thank you, no disagreement with that, but just be good to know, you mentioned the headroom, could you possibly remind us how much headroom was left in the budget, just in, if there is a spirit of being generous this evening, which we haven't been in the last couple of years, just be interested to know how much we've got to play with.
• If we went to the indicative budget-- - If I remember, so if we take the indicative budget as 96,000, and we're recommending, I think it's what, 76, I'm around about that, so it's about 20,000, and that's just in this range, I know in the previous range, we're about under as well, so I'm okay.
• Yeah, yeah.
• So are you saying more of the full amount?
• Yeah, is that what you were suggesting, Councilor Worrall? Yeah, this year for the last time, yeah, the full amount, yeah, okay. Yes. Yeah, Councilor Worrall has proposed, who seconded that? Yeah, Councilor Rigby, thank you, that's been agreed. So we're on to number 10, CEN Unity CIC, which is recommended for care to carers. Agreed? Okay. Share Community, recommended, Inclusive Health and Wellness, agreed, yeah, yep, thank you. Board Primary School PTA, the School Language Unit Spanish Club, not recommended, yeah.
• Thank you, Chair. Actually, in all honesty, I think this is a good project. I think it's a relatively modest grant that's been requested. I think actually, I appreciate, you know, there could be some work to tighten the application up a little bit, which I'm sure officers could help with, but in terms of actually the benefit that this could have in the community, I think it's pretty wide-ranging. You know, the applicant talks about 45 children that would benefit from this in terms of the application. The grant request is 2,850. I think if we are to look at what we use the grant fund for, which is to leave potentially a lasting legacy and to do something good from an educational perspective, something which improves language skills and maybe inspires some of the children that take part to pursue Spanish language in the future, I think it's a good project. So it's one, actually, that I think is one that the committee should give some consideration to. It's modest, but it's potentially quite impactful.
• Good. Just the officers want to comment on your not recommending this, and then others can--
• Sure, yep, can do. So the discussions I have is with people in children's services who know this age group well and know the working skills. So one of the things we picked up with this particular school is that they do have a little bit of Spanish lesson in curriculum time, and it seemed to be that the identification of the need for the project, so the question is why is the school having this particular language wasn't really clear other than they did a little bit during the classroom time anyway, and they had someone, I think it's a parent who speaks Spanish, and so linking that with the school that it is in terms it's a language school, so for children who have got particular language issues, there wasn't a connection to that, so that was one of the questions. And I think one of the questions that the committee's always raised, particularly with school projects, is is it just benefiting those children who go to the school or is it broader community use, and that was one of the questions, so it's only about children who are at the school, so there was an issue there. And I think, in terms of it's about 45, what they seem to be doing is there's 15 children each term who could stay on each term or move on to something else, so in terms of the numbers who might benefit somewhere between 15 and 45, so that could be quite variable, and so the question then was in terms of yes, they're going to do some language, some culture, things like that for this particular issue, how much would a child benefit if they're only there for a single term, so a question about how much benefit would this be for a child of this age, given that they're at the school. So there's lots of questions around about it that the officers and children's services who work with, they felt that they couldn't recommend to the committee. Okay, thank you Mr. Mayor. Councillor Mayorkas, Councillor Rigby, did you have a hand up? Sorry. No, sorry. Have hands gone down? Sorry, there's been a recommendation that we do agree this, what the committee, it's in our hands. Councillor Hamilton, did you want to say something first? I did, rather than moving to recommend what I would instead suggest, and having just sort of removed that at this stage, if they can bring something back which does address the point about the wider community, it would be good to see that in the future, if only because I think the quality of language teaching in this country is atrocious and anything we can do to improve it the best. Yeah, that's really helpful. Isn't it, but also I think an adequate time frame per child. Yeah, yeah. Good. I'm glad to see your promotion of Spanish. Councillor Hamilton. Thanks. Great. Spectacle media CIC, part of it video archive places near Battersea, recommended. Agreed? So older people's badminton, older people and LGBTQ+ community is not recommended. Sports for Health number 14. My understanding of this is it's been going on two or three years, it's a continuation of something. Okay, not recommended. St Mary's Church, Patnisola panel not recommended. Yes, Councillor Hedges. So what I'm advising is that we can rethink this one because St Mary's Church in Thamesfield is an important community hub, it's not just a church, so getting a sustainable and cost effective source of power will help them continue to host community events and they don't charge for things like hosting safer neighbourhood meetings and other communities. So if we can rethink that one, that would be really great. Please. Comments from officers. So we've had a number of projects like this before for churches and other community spaces. So one of the things we do with the WANDA grant fund is because of the nature of the fund, we would like to get projects started fairly quickly within three months of making an award. One of the issues with this program, and I say we've had this with other solar panel projects before, is where applicants haven't got proper planning permission, this is a listed building as well, and they do state and own applications, they don't have planning permission, they haven't done the structural survey for the building, and we had this issue before with one of the churches who we provided a grant for then, when they did the structural survey, the weight of the solar panels were too heavy for the roof they wanted to do. So one of the things that, I think what we're saying is at this stage, we wouldn't recommend it, but once those planning permission is granted and they've actually done the structural survey, and they've got quite a lot of other funding in place as well so they can activate the project within the three months of the fund, then I think we would be much more supportive in recommending it, but it's not at this time we feel. Did presume you give all that feedback to the applicant, to the church? We will do, yes. And are there any other awards out there, I think I remember seeing something from the mayor's office about solar panel funding. Yeah, there are things like London Energy, there's a number of grants around, some of the specialists of people like Crew Energy can actually give advice to people, but certainly they are looking for funding. I just think at this time, making this application, it was just a bit early, a bit too early for them, but it could be one that, as I said, if they've got those permissions in place, particularly the planning permission and the structural survey, which is really important because it's the weight and type of solar panels that they're using on the building, which makes a big difference, and often, although they do have an architect on the team, but it's making sure that the solar panel company has done the survey themselves, so they are sure actually that the weight of that roof can take the weight of the panels themselves, which is really important. Councillor Rigby was trying to get in. I've got one, I would say that the Church of England is one of the richest institutions in the country, it generates a billion pound a year in revenue from its assets, so I'm not quite sure why they're coming here for that. In the last year, we have agreed at another church where it would have made a big difference to the community activities because of the cost of energy. So we know, and again, this is one of the other things, they have to get permission from the diocese as well, and we know that that can take quite a long time to do it, and certainly talking to the different churches which we've been talking to over the years, there's a number of funds, both in Church of England and the Church's Trust Fund and others which they make application to, and often the response from the main Church of England would say, and church commissioners is we've got lots of properties, so although it appears to be quite rich, actually it's quite difficult for the individual churches to get money from the core funding, I'm afraid. So each individual church and the PCC, there are fundraisers all over the place, I think this is £54,000 for the whole project, so they're looking all over the place for funding. Councillor Rigby, go on. Yes, so the Church of England should be looking to make sure that all of its buildings are environmentally ready and put in solar panels on all of their properties. I think it's their properties. We do look at the reserves, but I'm looking at the reserves of the individual church, and rather than the main body. Interesting debate about the Church of England and their violence. I think we're not agreeing at this stage for a number of slightly different reasons around the table. Good, thank you. That's number 15. Number 16, the Bing Company London Calling is not recommended, agreed. Number 17 is not recommended, the Good Gym creating a greener, cleaner Wandsworth. I thought it was quite an interesting application, and there aren't many applications about the environment, as we've said, but I don't know if any advice could be given to them. You see this on Instagram the whole time, they do some great stuff, but it's supposed to be just a voluntary thing. Having pain for an area activator is a bit odd. Partly it's good for the environment, but partly it's good for health and wellbeing in this project, so that's what I kind of thought was interesting. Yeah, and it could be run on a voluntary basis, couldn't it? Like heart run. Do you want to comment on that? They're asking for staffing, aren't they? Just to pick up Councillor Rigby's point, certainly what they aim to do, I think this is about trying to get something started. And that's where we get a bit confused, because we know that Good Gym has been operating in the borough for quite some years, because we gave them a grant many years ago to get started. So for us to come back and have a paid activator to re-energise this, the question is why. But the longer term plan in the second year of this would be to train up some volunteers to run it on a voluntary basis. So it is a bit surprising, and I've looked on their website of Good Gym, and one doesn't seem to be there, so whether the numbers have gone down recently, I don't know. But I think in terms of our advice to them, in terms of both the people who are encouraging to run, we would say, well, actually, are you targeting people who are maybe not currently active in that way, to try to encourage them to run? So that would help the Council in terms of targeting those people, which is part of the activity plan, and also in terms of the environmental projects, which they were suggesting, if that was a bit more targeted, and exactly what were they going to do and where, so there was a bit more planning ahead, and a bit more focused, then that would help us as well. So are they going to be doing those projects in particular places that need it, particularly in some of the public areas? So I think my advice to them was, if they could come back with a much more focused and targeted project, then, because it's a bit vague, 5 kilometres from Wontal Town, that's quite a vague area, then something a bit more focused would help, but certainly they've grown from many, well, seven or eight years ago, and have grown quite big, but the intention is to run it on a voluntary basis. Did you want to come back, Councillor Regan? No, okay. We're agreeing not to recommend at this stage. Santa and Spen is recommended part funding. Yeah, although I just was a bit confused about this. So it says the ward is Latchmere, but it's in Ballum, and it's Tower Hamlet, so. Oh, I've gone ahead. Are we agreeing item 18? Yeah, okay. Sorry, so we're on to item 19, yeah, yeah, do you want to, Councillor Rigby, do you want to? I actually just confused about it, yeah, so, yeah, I mean, is this Ballum thing, or a Latchmere? Yeah, yeah, do you want to, number 19? So yes, it's run by an organisation which is formerly called Tower Hamlet's Youth Sports Foundation, which actually works all across London now. The Tower Hamlet's Youth Sports Foundation is Tower Hamlet's equivalent of ENABLE, switch to the stuff, so it's a social enterprise, but they'll actually now work all across London, and have this big project called Platform Cricket, introducing cricket to young people all across London. They have previously just about early Covid, I think, we've provided them some funding for a hub in Battersea, and they did some programme with young people in Battersea schools, and they used Battersea Park for their summer activities, and they were quite successful there, so, of the young people they worked, so they worked with young people in schools, and then they attract them to sort of an after-school thing, a weekend-type project, what they call their hub, and they had about, I think, about 40 per cent come to the hub, and so what they're doing now is they're trying to move down to the Ballam area, and work with a series of schools down there, and we know from all the projects they've done across London, actually they're very successful, and certainly moving down to Ballam, the schools that they're working with, they're fairly confident, because they've done a little bit of work with some of the schools already, they'll attract quite a lot of young people, and introduce them to cricket, which is quite difficult to get into. So the Prime Waters Ballam? Yes, the Prime Waters Ballam, yes. Okay, we're agreed. Thank you very much. And number 20, Wandsworth Bereavement Service to deal with the backlog of assessments is recommended. Yes, we're agreed. Good, we've got through all the applications. You've got the follow-up from last year to read through and comment on. I think we've come to the end of the meeting, yes? Could I thank the members of the committee? Yes, I think someone wanted to get through by quarter past, so we're ahead of time. Could I thank the officers very much for the reports? Yes, thank you. Okay, we're done. [BLANK_AUDIO]