Harrow Council grants: who may get what

GIRL guides, teenagers and vulnerable women are among those people who are likely to benefit from Harrow Council grants after councillors opted to spread the cash a little thinner.

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Ian Proctor

09:39, 5 FEB 2013
Updated16:48, 26 SEP 2013

GIRL guides, teenagers and vulnerable women are among those people who are likely to benefit from Harrow Council grants after councillors opted to spread the cash a little thinner.
The authority's grant committee recommended yesterday evening how the council should distribute its discretionary £600,000 fund - although this needs to be ratified by the cabinet committee and then the full council later this month, and is subject to a separate appeals process.

Beforehand petitions in favour of funding Harrow Shopmobility, with just less than 500 names, and Harrow Women's Centre, boasting 575 signatures, were handed in by supporters of those organisations.

Committee chairwoman Councillor Nana Asante (Labour) told the meeting: "There is a limited pot and the competitive process that the sector has asked for is fairer than we have ever been, in that we reward excellence.
"We would like to have the process as open as possible and not have preferential candidates."
The committee decided to ring-fence £75,000 to set up a new replacement Council for Voluntary Service organisation that provides infrastructure support for charities and not-for-profit bodies by organising training, helping with accounts and the legal hurdles, and assisting with funding applications.
Councillors opted to give all outcome-based grants applicants that scored above 88 per cent in its evaluation 70 per cent of the sum sought for the first year of their three-year projects. Applications scoring between 80 per cent and 87 per cent will get 44 per cent of their bid amount.
This means organisations that had threatened to miss out on cash - namely Girlguiding Middlesex North West, the Harrow Women's Centre, Harrow Mencap and Age UK Harrow - were awarded at least some money.

Avani Modasia, chief executive of Age UK Harrow, based in Canning Road, Wealdstone, said: "Like any organisation, we wanted 100 per cent funding but we understand the council doesn't have the money.

"However, we are disappointed and we are going to appeal our assessment score of 80 per cent. We need to understand how they came to the score, and why they scored us so lowly on some aspects."

Mrs Modasia said charities were unhappy the council did not consult with the voluntary sector when it reduced to £500,000 the size of the grants budget after all the applications had been submitted. Eventually £100,000 was reinstated but the pot is still smaller than when organisations were invited to bid.

The grants committee decided to reward 26 bidders with small grants worth a maximum of £5,000. Those with evaluation scores of 80 per cent or higher will get 75 per cent of the sum requested and those between 55 per cent and 79 per cent receive 52 per cent of the amount applied for.