Transcript

Great. Welcome, everyone, to this meeting. My name is Councillor Steve Worrall, Deputy Chair of the Grants Overview and Scrutiny Subcommittee. That's a mouthful. Unfortunately, Councillor Ambache is unable to attend this meeting, and it's proposed that I chair this meeting in this absence. Is everybody in agreement? Great. Thank you. What I'd like to do is just go around and ask everybody to introduce themselves, starting with Jack. Hello. I'm Councillor Jack Rilkes, Councillor in Trinity Ward. Norman Marshall. Angela Gray. Daniel Hamilton, Conservative. Councillor Lindsay Hedges of Bannan Ward and Opposition Spokesperson for Grants. Thank you. Great. Thank you, everyone. We've received apologies for absence from Councillor Ambache, and we are just waiting for Councillor Rigby to come, so I presume she's running late. So moving on, we have officers present, and I'm going to ask the officers to introduce themselves as they actually address the papers tonight. So the first issue on the agenda is any declarations, either of pecuniary or other registrable or non-registrable interests. Great. Thank you, everyone. The first item on the agenda, then, is the minutes of the last meeting. Does the committee agree that the minutes of the previous meeting of the 29th of January 2025 can be signed as the correct record? Great. Thank you. Moving on to the next item, then. It's a paper on the Victory in Europe VE Day Anniversary Grant Fund for Community Organisations, paper 25142. We have Ben Threadgold, who will be talking to the paper. Ben's actually on the line, so Ben, if I can hand over to you. Thank you very much, and good evening, everyone. Hoping everyone can hear me okay. My name is Ben Threadgold. I'm the Head of Strategic Projects, and I've been leading on the coordination of our work leading up to VE Day Anniversary Celebrations next week, the 80th anniversary. Hopefully, the paper is reasonably self-explanatory. I apologise that it was a little bit late, but it was due to the speed of which we were trying to turn around the applications in quite short order. It's also the reason why it was originally established through an SO83A to make sure that we tried to give community groups as much time as possible to put their bids in and to get the decisions back to them so they could then make arrangements to put things in place, probably this weekend for the vast majority of them. In total, we had 14 applications. Several of those, unfortunately, weren't eligible, and so what we have is made decisions on nine of those to receive a total of around just under £5,000 funding going to support activities going on across the borough. And as I say, probably very happy just to stop at that point and to take any questions or expand on anything you'd like me to. Thank you. Any questions? Councillor Graham? Well, not questions. I think it's absolutely brilliant. I'm just so sad that more people didn't. Very positive. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Graham. Any other questions from the committee? Just one, Ben, just very quickly. In terms of the events that have been awarded, how are they going to be advertised, speaking to Councillor Graham's point about people knowing of the events, just wondering what mechanisms are used to make people aware that these things are happening? So, as a whole, we've been communicating to make people aware of where there are street parties, where there's other events and activities and so on that are taking place across the borough over the coming week, whether that be things we've funded or, indeed, things that we haven't but we've been made aware of. We've also asked each of the applicants to make clear how they are going to promote their events because, in a lot of cases, this is directly targeted for specific areas. Part of the intention was to say, you know, where people might not be able to attend a street party, for example, arranged just locally, that these community groups would then be promoting their own activities locally. And a lot of them have already been working with other community groups, talking to, you know, leaflet drops within the local area and so on to make sure people are aware of it. What we've also asked is that, following the events, people provide us with information about what happened and any photos or other kind of summaries or whatever they might do. And we've also asked people if they'd like, you know, the mayor to attend or someone else to let us know. And some people have taken us up on that. And we're trying to make sure that, obviously, the mayor is able to get around to as many places as possible. Great. Thank you very much. So, in terms of the paper, the paper is here for information. Is the paper noted? Great. Thank you very much. The next paper is then paper 25143, the Wandsworth Borough Sanctuary Community Fund. I'm going to ask Mr. Hardy to speak to the paper. I'd also like to welcome two representatives here who helps with the process, and I'll ask Mr. Hardy to actually explain their role within this as well. Thank you, Chair. So, this is the fourth round of the Borough Sanctuary Grant Fund. It was established in March 2023 for £200,000, and we've got about £111,000 left, having previously funded eight projects. In the paper before you, for our fourth round, we received eight applications worth about £82,000, and the recommendations are to fund five of those with a combined total of £49,000. As the Chair mentioned, this round of funding is different in that it's the first round where we've involved people with lived experience. So, I'd like to introduce Tatiana and Kostya, if they want to say hello. Yes. Hello, everyone. My name is Kostya. Nice to meet you. Good evening. My name is Tatiana Anisimova. I'm glad to be here to help you. Thank you. So, as part of our Borough Sanctuary application, we got our accreditation last year. We made a commitment that half of the people on the ones with Migration Board would be people with lived experience, and Tatiana and Kostya and their colleague Hina, who unfortunately can't make it tonight, are our first board members. And so, they're the first people that are involved in this application. For each application, they've gone through it, and in the assessment summary, you'll see their comments. And they're also here to take any questions on those comments from you tonight. Just the last little bit of the paper is about a Refugee Week grant fund, which is we're suggesting that with the remaining fund, which will be at least £29,000, we launched a really short, sharp grant scheme for events during Refugee Week, no more than £2,000 per application. And I brought that to you today just so we can get that out as quickly as possible. Refugee Week begins on the 16th of June, and the theme is Community is a Superpower. Great, thank you. Before we move to each individual application, any questions from the committee on the actual report itself? Okay. Looks as if it's going to be quite speedy tonight, then. Okay, so if we move through each paper individually, and I'll ask Mr. Hardy to speak to each paper as they come up. So the first one is the Afghan and Central Asian Association. Thank you. Yes, so this is an application for essentially information sessions and workshops, as well as one large community event. The sessions would cover things like ESOL and IT classes and community health. The comments from the panel, and again they had to answer questions if you have any from them, was they had concerns about the range of the project and the number of things involved and the deliverability of it. In each of these applications, I've included where we went back for, with questions for clarification for the applicants. And one of the things that flagged concerns for us about this application was that it did not seem to be very tailored towards Wandsworth. Some of the wards they identified as having the most number of sanctuary seekers in Wandsworth aren't the ones that we would identify as being those. And they also said they do things like they support, they've supported bridging hotels in Wandsworth over the past 12 months. We haven't had one over the past 12 months. So I've no doubt that this is a good organisation generally in what they do, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of tailoring towards Wandsworth in the application, which is why it's recommended that we don't support this one. Any questions from the committee? Okay. No? Are we in agreement? Great. Okay. The next one is Ace of Clubs, paper reference number 19. So Ace of Clubs, their application is for £8,500, and it's to deliver four themed weeks with events, and these are during weeks that are relevant to sanctuary seekers. Their events would include things like diverse meals, information displays and wellbeing in ESOL activities. The big thing to point out about this application is that although 40% of their expected attendees would be Wandsworth residents, which tallies up with their existing cohort, the organisation is based in Lambeth, and the activities would be delivered in Lambeth. The panel felt that wasn't an issue, and if you want, then Tatiana is able to talk to that a bit more. But given the availability of cross-London grants from organisations like London councils, the fact that this isn't in Wandsworth, the Office of Recommendation is not to support it. Agree. Thank you. Next paper then is Keras. Thank you. So Keras' application is for just under £10,000, and it's two parts. The first is a Refugee Week event, so that's an event during Refugee Week to celebrate sanctuary seekers, and then to follow that up by creating a small team of people with lived experience experience to create social media content and other digital content to challenge negative perceptions about sanctuary seekers. The panel's comments around that were they liked the challenging negative perceptions element, and they liked the fact that it was going to help develop skills, especially around digital and social media. So the recommendation is to grant. Any questions? Can you switch your microphone on, please? Thank you. Just if you could clarify a little bit the methodology, because I noticed that you talk about 30, some number less than half of, 100 attendees, 30 from refugee backgrounds, but then if I look onto page 32, there's an application which has been turned down because it's primarily, although there are some refugees accessing it, it's not primarily aimed at refugees. So I just wonder how these two match up. They both seem to be sort of similar in that they're only getting a smaller number of refugees per se, but one has been gated and the other one's been blocked. Sorry, I haven't got the same page numbers as you. Is that on page 32? Is that Tooting Green's Kitchen? Let me, I think it's, I've got, for me, it's on page 32, and that's, yes, it's the, it is indeed the Tooting Community Kitchen. Overall, the last page, the project is not tailored towards sanctuary seekers. It's not clear what additional value. I mean, there's a separate point there, but they've got 60 to 80 guests we can, this is all guests, not just sanctuary seekers. So there's some, there's some, there's some mixture of sanctuary seekers and not sanctuary seekers. I mean, just, just, just if you could just clarify a little bit. Yes, so I know, of course, you have a point about Tooting Community Kitchen when we, when we get to it. The methodology is essentially, we will agree to funding any element of a project that supports sanctuary seekers from Wandsworth, and if that's proportional, as long as they can prove, it is, you know, we are definitely going to support 40% of, like 40% of our attendees will be sanctuary seekers from Wandsworth. We are willing to fund it up to 40%. For that latter application, there was no element of sanctuary seekers really in that application. So there was no evidence or suggestion that there would be any at all, or, so if, if, for example, they'd come to us and said, I'm jumping ahead a bit, but we've done a survey and we know that 20% of our service users are sanctuary seekers, we're applying for 20% of our winning costs, that would have been fine. Notwithstanding other issues. Yeah. Thank you. Councillor Hitches. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr Hardy, and also Tatiana, and I'm probably going to pronounce this incorrectly, Kostja. Kostja, yeah. Did I get it right? Thank you. I think Karras is a really, like the paper says, it's a very well-known organisation to us, and it's come through a few times on this committee, and I really, really support everything they do, but I guess my point here is we have awarded a number of grants to them through the Borough of Sanctuary Fund, and I just wanted to check, is there a cap on what we do, or can we, if somebody, if an organisation applies, can we just, do we just keep awarding them if they come up with a good business plan, basically? Yes. We've never set a cap. We wouldn't fund the same thing, wouldn't overlap anything, so we'd need to make sure there's a level of additionality, and I said that in the, we held two meet the funder events, and we're very clear, your application needs to show additionality, but even in this paper, there's an application, there's two applications from the same organisation. As long as they're different projects, they meet the criteria, and we think they're actually good projects, there's no cap on that. We would, sorry, we have said, if the fund is oversubscribed, and if there's multiple applications from the same organisation, chances are, that would be the first one to go, but we're not oversubscribed. Thank you. Councilor Makos. Just wondering if, if it's a successful project, which I hope it will be. I wonder if it's a kind of model that the council could learn from, or perhaps adopt, in some of our work with the sanctuary. You know, it seems like it could be a project that you could do each year, or around certain moments throughout the year. So perhaps just worth noting. That sounds like a very useful, and good suggestion. I would ask Mr. Hardy, maybe to take it back for consideration. Thank you. So in terms of this award, is the committee an agreement? Great. Thank you. The next one up is the Catherine Lowe settlement. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, so this is an application for drop-in sessions for advice, offering nine hours of support across three different areas, that is family, youth clubs, and new arrivals. They're essentially advice services. The big draw for this application, the big draw for this application, though, is the CRESH. We know the availability of childcare is a barrier for especially mothers accessing services, so that's quite a good element of the application. There is... Sorry, no, I'm jumping ahead. Yeah, the recommendation is to award. Any questions in relation to this application? Okay. Is the committee an agreement? Great. Thank you. Moving on then to the next application, Power to Connect. Thank you. This is a project for digital skills. They're applying for £10,000. It is six courses over four weeks, so it's about eight hours of course, including drop-in sessions, up to 14 hours of drop-in sessions. It's for two separate cohorts, so the first are sanctuary seekers with low levels of English, and that is to help them functionally access digital skills, and the second is for sanctuary seekers with higher levels of English, and then that will support them into different employment skills. Yeah, the panel... The panel's comments were that they liked that different element of skills, however, a bit of scepticism about whether or not 40 hours of drop-in sessions would actually be used. Any questions? Councillor Hamilton. Thank you. It's not so much a question, but more an observation. I always think when we look at these applications, one of the things that I try and judge them on the basis of is the lasting skills and the legacy that they leave behind, and I can scarcely think of a better use of funding here than actually improving English language skills. You know, it takes away the sense of isolation. It gives people skills to get back into the workplace in the fullness of time, and I think those skills are exceptionally useful ones for us to be funding. Thank you. Just a question in relation to this application. It's running two different groups. So would applicants to those groups have to go through an assessment process beforehand, or how are they evaluated to know which aspect they're going into? Thank you. So they, Power to Connect already run drop-in sessions, so it would be from people that have already approached them, so they would do the assessment. They already work with these people on an informal basis. We did actually ask this question because there was a query around what's new about this, what's the additionality points, because we already do fund them, and the point is that this is, rather than just dropping in, how do I get the council's website on my phone, it's more tailored to, these are the skills you need. So they know these people, they've done that assessment, they stream them. Thank you. Councillor Graham. Thank you. This is very interesting. Power to Connect. I think ESOL, as you say, is very important for anybody coming in our country because it's the lifeblood, isn't it, of going forward. I've got a great belief in lifelong learning, the college that we have, and it would be lovely if we could associate what we're doing, if you want to bring everybody into an inclusive environment, to investigate lifelong learning, because they do ESOL courses, and they're feeling down, they've got courses to raise their confidence, because a lot have low confidence coming to a new country, and I just think that that, I don't know what your thoughts are on that, I can't see lifelong learning, but how can we have, you know, what we've got in our council, we can actually get them involved. into life. Is that something worth thinking about? Mr. Hardy, would you like to answer that first before I comment? Yeah. So I think the college is part of the Wandsworth Migration Forum, and one of the conditions of these grants is that our funded organisations are part of the forum, so we are actively trying to make sure that where there's links to be made, so that, for example, there'll be some cross-referral. The college might want to refer to Power2Connect, Power2Connect might say, actually, do you know what, you've outgrown us, it's time for the college. So you're absolutely right, those, where different bits of ESOL are being taught, especially in less formal settings, there's space for partners to be cross-referring to each other to either pick up a different specialist skill, like Power2Connect, or to move on to the next step, if the college can provide higher levels of ESOL. Thanks for the answer, Ms. Hart, and I think you're right, language skills are an important element of settling in the country and being able to access services, so I particularly welcome this project, I think it's really good, but in terms of the committee, is the committee happy with the answers provided? Great, great, thank you. There I am falling over my words as well. So the next one is the Tooting Community Kitchen. Now I recognise that we've dealt with this partly already in your answer, your previous answer. So yes, so this is an application for group activities and workshops. In the paper, it lists the different types of activities they do. There's also an admin element where people can come in and have support to access advice. I will pass on to Kosti now who wanted to talk a bit about this and also is going to demonstrate the part about ESOL. His language skills are much better than mine. Yes, so the application mentioned 60 to 80 guests weekly and my concern is that how do you make sure that the guests are actually refugees and not, for example, homeless people and as our grants are supposed to be for sanctuary seekers. And my second concern is that the project is ongoing and I believe it is better to support new schemes than the existing ones. Great. Thank you for that insight and that commentary. It's really helpful. I was wondering, does anybody else on the committee have any questions about this? Yes. Councillor Graham. I think what you're saying, not think, I know what you're saying is very sensible in the fact that how can they identify asylum seekers and people who are actually at back to them which I'm sure it will be. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Graham. Is the committee then in agreement with the recommendations from the officers? Great. Great. Thank you. The next one, we have two applications coming in from the same organisation. So the first one is Wandsworth Welcomes Refugees, the children's books in Wandsworth libraries. Thank you. Yes, so this is an application for children's books in Wandsworth libraries. It is supported by the head of Wandsworth libraries who has confirmed that they would work with the organisation. They've already started planning it and essentially it's to provide a collection of resources to go around as well as a series of events that weren't highlighted that much that well in the first application but there is going to be at least one event in each library as well aimed at again challenging stereotypes and giving more access to resources about sanctuary seekers in our libraries which there was one concern of the panel and I know again I'm going to hand over to Kostya who wanted to flag that. Yes, so to start with based on my experience as a 17-year-old student I think it is crucial to educate young people and children to actually read books in the world of social media and internet and I believe that meetings in the libraries will provide a place for young people to share their own experiences and make new friends which is I think especially important in this age however it is necessary to advertise the scheme to parents as well because I think that it might be difficult to advertise to young children especially those in primary schools but I think maybe secondary schools as well great thank you I suppose it's an issue that's been brought up Mr Hardy I wonder if there's a response to how we are going to advertise this so it will be for the organisation too but we will also advertise it refugee services itself is developing a comms plan for sanctuary seekers across Wandsworth and it will be part of that part of a newsletter we will advertise it amongst our forums I think the one thing that there's a specific group that we do want the organisation to think about how they're going to target which is teenagers because getting teenagers to a library for an event might be difficult sorry Councillor Rigby Councillor Hamilton has been yeah I mean actually libraries have become the coolest place for teenagers to go it's like a big thing at the moment so yeah they're all posting on TikTok about you know going to the library it's like having a resurgence yeah no like I I know that during the A levels they were queuing around the block to get in Battersea Library well things certainly have changed Councillor Hamilton thank you so I have a question about the sort of definition of what what sanctuary books are I ask that not to be not to be sort of difficult or to be downbeat about it I'm just interested to know what this what this entails because one of the things from a number of conversations I've had with a number of refugee communities in Wandsworth and further afield is when it comes to actually access to books the challenge isn't so much getting access to English language literature which our libraries are I think very well stocked with already but particularly when it comes to Ukrainians that have come from the UK to the UK the actual number of Ukrainian language books for example is relatively limited in the library service so I wondered if any of this literature that's being made available will be in foreign languages because I think that would be a really important contribution to making refugees and cyberseekers feel welcome in this borough and secondly perhaps this is something if that's not the case that we could direct towards Wandsworth welcomes refugees because I think that's certainly an application that I would like to see brought to the committee in the future to see more books in Ukrainian language in particular in Somali language but also in Portuguese language from the African Portuguese speaking states as well Mr Hardy I wonder if you are willing to answer that that's a very good point it's not something I thought of I don't recall it being in there for application form but it's definitely something that we can rather than wait for future application we'd encourage them to do it here we can make it a condition I'm sure Chaney and I know the people at Wandsworth welcomes refugees would be really open to that and thank you very much for that and it's not that I wish to be critical of this but you know it's great to see these sanctuary books but I'm unsure as to what they actually are whereas I could see real value from actually those foreign language books which allow the children to maintain their skills learn reading skills in their own languages as well which I think will be exceptionally important Councillor Maycross and in terms of kind of assessment I guess will there be any data collection on how often the books are then taken out in the future months and years or will it just be once they're in they're in and that's the plus the event I suppose I don't want to promise anything on behalf of libraries I don't know what their IT is capable of but if it is we can ask them to do that yes it would be really interesting yeah you're right in terms of the ongoing impact I'd be really interested to learn from who was taking what from which library just from that communications point finding out who is where is one of our big issues so that's yeah that's a really good point I will see if they can do it I'd support that recommendation I think it helps give us an insight as to how communities are settling in one's worth that the official data often doesn't give us and so it's an informal way of finding out more about the communities we're working with and supporting with so thank you both of you Councillor Graham I think this is a this is a great paper and looking at the project developer he's got a heck of a lot to do and I'm just also bringing into line so glad the library is supporting and the library is also very close to achieving sanctuary so they're there already so bringing my question to the academies Bairdwood School has its own library different primary schools have their own libraries and I know that in in Bairdwood they have students who are perhaps you are Bairdwood no Chester there you go and so that is something which I think is how are they going to achieve that so there is similar to libraries of sanctuary there is a work stream from the City of Sanctuary organisation called Schools of Sanctuary it's not currently in Wandsworth's action plan but it's something we're looking at and actually feeds in to the next application so because it does tie in with the next application so in a way it's a exactly so it might be that as well as sharing so I know this application talks about sharing the collection with schools but it might be that we investigate it might be that we investigate how schools can create their own as part of becoming a school of sanctuary no absolutely so I suppose your job then would be who would you connect contact you know at Banford School who would you and so and my other my other one is the fact that it's you're going to end this project by December unless I read it wrong on page 34 the timeline the timeline unfunding page 34 I may have it wrong I mean this this is a I mean you've got to select the person yes very good point and also can I just bug it in before you say something it would be a great thing if the libraries took on this person as a rather than just a one-off six six thousand three hundred pounds because if you're looking at going forward with this initiative which I think we should I'm just thinking how can you make this permanent because at the end of the day nice music it would be more permanent and it's just not a one-off and are they going to apply next year are you with me so I think it's a bigger project I think it's brilliant but it is for ones of people yes so on your first point if they can deliver it by December that would be great but you're right that's probably unrealistic but they can they have got 12 months to deliver it so that's a it's a tight deadline they've set themselves and if they go to next May then that's fine by me because they've got 12 months to deliver this project for your second point again that's something we need to talk to libraries about because just to be clear this project offer is going to be hired by Wandsworth Wellcomes Refugees not the library yes sorry Councillor Graham as naturalisation becomes a norm yeah there would be a transference of skills which would enrich yes us as a sanctuary and a borough yeah so in relation to sum up then I think there's a number of ideas that have come out of this paper to take back to the administration and to various work streams around how better incorporation with libraries how we actually make this more permanent structure and there's the suggestion of allowing slippage in terms of the timeline which I think is fully appropriate and then how we can actually develop this and make this more substantive project so I think there's some really good stuff there answers can't be given today tonight but I think there are some great ideas to also incorporate in our library strategy which I know is being worked on at this moment in time so in terms of the proposal before us including the proposal to allow slippage in terms of the timeline is the councilman agreement for the proposal great thank you and the next paper and final paper is once again Wandsworth welcomes refugees establishing sanctuaries in Wandsworth yes so this is an application to hire a project officer to help deliver Wandsworth welcomes refugees core activities those core activities include things like attending or running annual conferences and refugee week events but the main but the main one is around establishing other places of sanctuary in the borough so an example might be another version of the community home kitchen which is a cafe of sanctuary and essentially they're looking for a project officer to help deliver their core functions at the moment they're run mainly by volunteers they have applied for £14,800 which is above the £10,000 limit although we do allow either higher applications or longer applications if they're exceptional and I know Tatiana has a comment about whether this is exceptional or not so actually all members of immigration board supported this project we found that find all educational projects very important and useful regarding this one we are supporting this but we did not find why this project is exceptional so we did not find evidence that it's really exceptional so we are supporting but in limits which are established Ms. Hardy it's been raised as an issue then that even though the recommendation to support the exceptionality issue is not being met in relation to this so I wonder if there's an answer to that slight contradiction so I think the answer is in the recommendation which is to grant up to the £10,000 and then it would be up to the organisation to either scale the activities to that funding find additional funding or they could obviously just not do it any questions from the committee in relation to this I just got one in terms of the timeline on the project some of the outcomes of this project are a bit unclear and it would be useful to go back and actually firm up some more measurable outcomes in relation to this whether it's the number of organisations that I've met or something like that personally I would support this but say it's a bit of work in helping the ones with welcoming refugees to actually firm up more measurable outcomes of this would be a recommendation so I'm just trying to do some very quick maths so I think it's £175 a day based on six days a month allocating £12,600 so just saying if we do take if we say £10,000 and then you take away the £2,200 for the non-staff cost that's £7,800 divided by £175 is 44 days sorry divided by 12 is just under four days a month so it's sort of just observing that it would kind of chop that allocation of that person down almost by two-thirds one-third sorry I think in light of that observation then the recommendation of affirming up the outcomes is even more important so that it is realistic what we're wanting to achieve from this but thank you for that observation and the calculation any other questions about this is the committee an agreement great okay that's the last paper tonight and that concludes the business of the community so thank you everybody for attendance with your brief indulgence so I could just say on that note thank you very much I think we got the gist of what you were trying to say but also thank you for myself for attending tonight and thank you for the work that's being done may I say thank you from all of us speaking from Ukrainians we really feel this support from the moment we arrive here and till today so thank you great thank you and have a good evening everybody enjoy the rest of the evening you