Councillor Lynsey Hedges

Agenda

The Grants Sub-Committee met to consider recommendations for the second round of the VCS Cost of Living Grant Fund 2024. Eleven applications were submitted, requesting a total of £153,190. The committee recommended that six of these be granted, for a total of £80,962.

Agenda

The meeting began with a recitation of the Quran by the Mayor's Faith Leader, Ali Jafri. The Council then approved an update to the council's capital spending plans, despite some abstentions from Conservative councillors. Two motions were then considered. The first, proposed by the Labour administration, was a general statement in support of children's safety and wellbeing and was passed despite opposition from the Conservative group. The second, proposed by the Conservatives, expressed concern at the loss of winter fuel payments for many pensioners and called on the Council to take steps to provide for those affected. This motion was defeated, with the Conservatives voting in favour and Labour against. The meeting concluded with the reception of reports from several committees.

Agenda and decisions

The Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee met to discuss a range of financial matters. The Committee noted the contents of the Quarter 1 monitoring report and the Cost of Living Support Update. The Committee also considered and approved the latest round of budget variations.

Agenda

The meeting noted the independent review into the Putney Constituency general election count, and accepted all of the recommendations that were made in it. It also noted the progress of the Democracy Review and that a task and finish group would be established to develop proposals based on the recommendations made by the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny.

Agenda

The Grants Sub-Committee met to decide which organisations would receive grants from the Voluntary Sector Cost of Living Grant Fund and the Wandsworth Grant Fund. In total the committee recommended six applications from the Cost of Living Grant fund, for a total of £61,375, and eight from the Wandsworth Grant Fund, for a total of £76,856. During the discussion of the applications, there was some debate over whether the committee should take into account previous grants an organisation had received from the council when making their decisions, and there was also some debate over the criteria of the cost of living grant, with some councillors feeling that some otherwise good projects were not being funded because they did not meet the specific cost of living criteria.