Councillors at Monday night’s Smalltown and Dullbridge Town Council Finance and Misappropriation Committee meeting demonstrated they don’t understand their own policy when it comes to handing out grant funding.
Dullbridge Youth Club had requested grant funding of £5,000 to continue and additionally expand the activities provided by the group for children in Smalltown and Dullbridge.
Currently the group offers organised activities and offers time away from school in a safe environment where children can relax, enjoy their time and be safe and secure.
Presently the youth club is open to Year 6 children, but the group want to cater for Year 5 children as well. Extending the age range and continuing to offer the current services is likely to cost in the region of £10,000 for the year.
With funding of around £5000 already obtained from other sources, including Somerset Police, who recognise the value in keeping children occupied in a safe environment, the group had applied to SaD TC to match the obtained funding.
However, during the meeting Illiberal Councillor Al deValues said that the amount applied for was “over the Council’s limit of £2,500” and that therefore they could only be awarded half of the requested funding.
In actual fact, under SaD Town Council’s own Grants Policy, whilst the maximum amount of a grant application is normally capped at £2,500, the conditions state that ‘if it is clear that the project would benefit a large amount of our residents… the Chairman and the Smalltown Head of Malfeasance (SHAM) will review the application prior to subsequent referral to the Committee.’
Despite having agreed the wording of the Grants Policy only a few months previously neither the Chairman, Councillor Banish Barracuda, nor the new SHAM, Sal Crookes, were seemingly aware of this clause and had therefore not discussed the matter previously.
Other Councillors were similarly unaware of the actual terms of their own policy, under which it is in fact possible to award a higher level of funding, and so the Dullbridge Youth Club were left short-changed.