Local community grants expected to be cut

Some councillors not spending their budget anyway

Pots of money that support community initiatives could be slashed by more than a third.

The funds, officially called locality budgets, are given to Devon’s county councillors for them to help projects in their wards.

Right now each councillor has £8,000 a year to distribute, but this is set to drop to £5,000 in the new financial year beginning in April.

Cllr Phil Twiss (Conservative, Feniton and Honiton), cabinet member for finance, said he was “shocked” to find out how much some councillors had left in their locality budgets, something that has encouraged him to suggest the cut.

But other councillors told Devon County Council’s cabinet meeting this week that they felt the council should not enact the cut and should find the money somewhere else.

Cllr Frank Letch (Liberal Democrat, Crediton) said as chair of one of the council’s scrutiny committees he “wouldn’t be doing my duty” if he didn’t raise the topic.

“We discussed this at some length and the recommendation from my committee was unanimous that we should urge the council to find the money [to maintain the locality budgets].

“As Cllr Twiss said, we get a pretty rubbish deal from central government as a rural council, and the locality fund is one of those things that we can offer community groups.”

Cllr Letch said when he first became a councillor, locality budgets were £10,000.

“Such a cut would mean local community groups are going to suffer and those councillors elected next year will find their little pot running out.”

Cllr Jacqi Hodgson (Green, Totnes and Dartington), agreed and suggested that some of the money from the near £1.4 million spent on ‘stop smoking’ campaigns could be used to keep locality budgets at their current £8,000 level.

However, Cllr Hodgson was told that any proposed amendments to the budget would have to be made at next week’s full council meeting, and that it is unlikely the smoking campaign funding – which is ringfenced – could be used for another purpose.

Cllr Twiss acknowledged the issue of locality budgets was “thorny”, but his proposal was more benevolent than he would choose.

“Personally, I would advocate that all the [locality budget] money should go into one account and we should bid for it, as it was noticeable until very recently that a shed load had not been used by a number of members of this council,” he said.

“Considering we are coming to the end of the time it can be used, that was shocking and so I would advocate reducing it to zero, but I know I’m never going to win that argument.

“So as a compromise, I have agreed and will support reducing it to £5,000 from £8,000.”

The discussion was part of talks about the council’s entire budget, which was approved by cabinet and will now be discussed by full council later this month.

The latest data on the council’s website shows Cllr Jeffrey Wilton-Love (Conservative, Bideford West and Hartland) still has more than £11,600 out of a remaining total budget of £14,800, the most outstanding of any councillor.

Forty out of 60 councillors have something left in their locality budget pots, although this is as small as £117 in some cases.