Rother council leaders have backed plans to deliver the authority’s community grants scheme through a charity, albeit with a reduced funding pot.
On Monday, April 7 Rother District Council’s cabinet supported proposals which could see the Sussex Community Foundation (SCF) take on responsibility for running the district’s grants programme.
The proposed partnership, which will be put to a full council vote in the near future, would replace the council’s current community grants scheme. SCF is already linked many other charity funders in Sussex, including the Rye Fund and the grants offered by the Little Cheyne Court Wind Farm Fund.
In a report to cabinet, officers said the new system would be expected to: provide better value for money; reach smaller communities through a simpler application process; and potentially increase the level of funding coming into the district.
A council spokesman said: “The arrangement would mark the establishment of a potentially significant and highly beneficial strategic relationship, with potential to bring other non-statutory funding into the district going forward.”
The council’s current community grants scheme has an annual pot of £130,000. The replacement scheme would have a reduced pot of £100,000.
However, the report notes how the full £130,000 allocation has not been spent in recent years, with only £60,000 being awarded in 2024/25.
In the report, a council spokesman said: “Feedback from previous and potential applicants is that our current grants scheme is too onerous and complex. There are challenges for smaller organisations surrounding the match funding requirement. It can take up to six months for a decision to be confirmed to the applicant.”
Officers say the partnership with SCF is expected to address some of these challenges with a simpler and more streamlined application process.
The partnership would also result in some other changes to the way the grants scheme operates. These include a reduction in the maximum level of grant funding available for capital projects (from £30,000 to £20,000) and the introduction of revenue — i.e. ongoing rather than one-off project funding — grants of up to £10,000.
It could also see some changes to eligibility criteria, although this part of the proposal has changed since the plans were first revealed. The report notes how the type of organisations not eligible to apply for grants would be expanded to include not-for-profit organisations with an income of more than £2 million.
An earlier version of the proposals, which had been due for consideration in October, could have seen parish and town councils also become ineligible to apply for grants. This part of the proposal has been dropped however, with the scheme to remain open to those bodies.
Overall, the report says, priority will be given to smaller groups and organisations with annual incomes under £100,000.
As part of the partnership, Rother District Council is expected to pay a management fee of around £13,000 per annum. The report says this would be less than the council’s current internal management costs, which come to more than £20,717.
The council would also be expected to disband its current Rother Community Grants Panel, replacing it with an advisory panel
Some councillors — including overview and scrutiny committee chairman Paul Osborne (Con) — expressed reservations about the loss of this member-led decision-making panel.
But council leader Doug Oliver stressed that members would still be involved in the process. He said: “It does say member involvement would be conserved and that is important. I don’t think members would want to pass this over … and we would be kept up to date with progress and invited to share the success of what goes on.
“I am also very, very reassured that [Rother Voluntary Action] have been involved in this proposal development and it has their support, because they are a linchpin between the community and seeking funding.”
Labour councillor Sam Coleman also highlighted how the partnership could protect grant funding in the face of wider changes expected to affect local government.
He said: “When this came to us before I was hesitant about it, partly because there was this sort of danger that if you take the community grants out of our control and give them to a third party then there is no guarantee that is going to persist. The community grants do a lot of good stuff and there are a lot of projects that get funded in our communities, which wouldn’t get funded otherwise.
“But actually, I think in the context particularly of local government reorganisation and devolution, obviously we are not going to exist as a council in a few years and we don’t know that pot is definitely going to exist in the new authority.
“So actually passing it on in a partnership with the Sussex Community Foundation makes sure that pot is more likely to be preserved, if the unitary authority would decide to cut ties with it.”
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