More than £120K of Lancashire County Council community funding so far unaccounted for

County Hall’s 84 elected representatives awarded just over £191,000 to voluntary and faith groups operating in their area during the 12 months to April 2024.

A total of 452 good causes benefited from the Local Member Grants Scheme (LMGS) in that period - but as of the end of September this year, only 181 of them had proved to Lancashire County Council that the money they received had been used for its intended purpose.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands the authority prefers to judge the response rate to its request for that information over a longer period - because some of the cash may have funded activities which took place only this summer.

“Satisfactory evidence” for the use of £67,698 of last year’s grants had been submitted to the county council within six months of the 2023/24 scheme closing - 35 percent of the total pot - with proof in relation to £123,416 of awards outstanding.

However, analysis of the initiative for the 2022/23 financial year - conducted 12 months after it ended - found that 83 percent of LMGS spending was ultimately accounted for.

Each year, members are allocated a £2,000 budget by the county council which they can use to support projects within their patch - although last year, the amount was boosted to £2,500 to fund local celebrations of the King’s coronation. County councillors decide at their own discretion which schemes to support based on applications made by groups seeking specific help.

The authority requests evidence of how individual grants have been used - either after a recipient organisation's project has ended or six months after the money was issued - in order to ensure rules have been complied with and the cash has been spent on the basis agreed by the member who awarded it.

When that information is not provided, the issuing county councillor is notified and would then have to consider whether to approve any future application from that group given their failure to engage with the authority - although there would be nothing to prevent them from doing so.

A report presented to a recent meeting of the county council's audit, risk and governance committee said that monitoring of the grant money is intended to be “proportionate”, taking into account the size of the organisations that receive the support and the resultant to keep requests for paperwork “to a minimum”.

A spokesperson for Lancashire County Council told the LDRS: "These are small grants - typically just a few hundred pounds - to small community organisations, often run by volunteers.

"We do send reminders to recipients asking for relevant documentation, but understand it can sometimes take time to get the information as these are not large scale professional bodies.

"In some cases community organisations come together for a single event or activity and awards are made a long time in advance to aid planning.

"Regular updates are made to the audit, risk and governance committee to assure councillors that the process is robust and there are no major concerns with the awards.

"Councillors generally consider the scheme to be a really positive one, helping them to support small local groups to make a big difference in their communities with relatively small sums of money."

Across 2023/24, the highest rate of outstanding evidence requests relate to the last month of the financial year - with 60 of the 65 projects given support in March 2024 not yet having provided the necessary information. However, details have also yet to be submitted regarding the use of cash issued much earlier in the year - with 119 of the 260 schemes funded between April and October 2023 still to report back.

Josh Mynott, the county council’s head of democratic services, told committee members that the groups that do not use the money in full, for the purpose they were awarded it, usually return the balance to County Hall.

“Most organisations are very open and honest about it - they appreciate the money they get,” he said.

Any money that goes unspent by a community group during the financial year in which it was issued can be returned to the relevant county councillor’s LMGS budget, while most of any cash that members have failed to award from their yearly allocations is instead used for the benefit of children in care and recent care leavers.

During 2023/24, 544 applications for funding were received by county councillors - meaning more than 90 were unsuccessful.

POPULAR PROJECTS

The most common use of member grants in 2023/24 was to fund community events - 172 of which received financial support. That was followed by the purchase of equipment (107 projects), sports and leisure activities (40), supporting community facilities (36), covering the cost of repairs and renovations (28), funding education projects (23), environment and climate change work (11), healthy eating initiatives (8), cost-of-living schemes (4), projects for older people (3) and park and play area upgrades (2). There were 11 ‘miscellaneous’ activities.

Examples of some of the grants awarded by members last year include:

***£370 to Kingsfold Football club for training equipment

***£200 for a new food mixer for the Royal Voluntary Service Garstang Lunch Club

***£750 to Kirkham in Bloom for gardening equipment

***£200 for Preston City of Sanctuary to pay for a family day for sanctuary seekers

***£350 to Incredible Edibles in Burnley to pay for garden equipment, plants and seeds

Source: Lancashire County Council

WHO CAN AND CAN’T APPLY?

The Local Member Grant Scheme is open to voluntary, community and faith sector (VCFS) groups working with local people in Lancashire which:

***have a constitution, set of rules, or articles of association in place;

***have a group bank or building society account;

***are a not-for-profit organisation.

However, the following groups are not eligible to apply for a grant:

***individuals;

***schools, colleges, academies or universities (but funding can be given to parent, teachers and friends associations);

***NHS organisations;

***parish and town councils:

***local authorities, police, fire or rescue services.