Agenda and minutes

An apology for absence was received from Councillor Juliet Brunner.

To invite Councillors to declare any Disclosable Pecuniary Interests or Other Disclosable Interests they may have in items on the agenda, and to confirm the nature of those interests.

There were no declarations of interest on this occasion.

There were no announcements from the Leader on this occasion.

To consider the enclosed report setting out the background to applications for grant as part of the ‘Help me to be financially independent’ theme for 2015/16.  In addition the Committee is also asked to consider the £13,332 underspend from the grant awarded to the Redditch CAB for 2014/15.

The Leader invited the Deputy Chief Executive to present the report and in doing so she highlighted a number of points, including the following:

·         Members were asked to consider the recommendation from the Grants Panel meeting held on 25^th March.

·         The sum of £75,000 was in respect of the Financial Independence category and had been re-advertised following the demise of the Redditch branch of the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) who had originally been awarded this sum from the 2015/16 grants.

·         The grant process had been re-opened for a period of 5 weeks and a number of organisations had put forward applications. 

·         The £13,332 referred to an under spend in the grant to Redditch CAB for 2014-15, which equated to two months payments.

·         The Council’s Framework Agreement for the provision of debt and budgeting advice had been established during 2014/15 and the Council had entered into an agreement with a number of providers.  The allocation of this money would enable the agreement to continue for a longer period of time than would otherwise be possible.

Councillor Greg Chance was a Member of the Grants panel and had chaired the meeting on 25^th March.  He confirmed that a number of applications had been considered and from the scoring matrix used the Bromsgrove CAB had scored the most points.  He felt it was important that the under spend from 2014-15 should be used for debt advice through the Framework Agreement as opposed to simply returning it to balances.

RESOLVED that

1)    The Financial Independence grant for £75,000 be awarded to Bromsgrove and District Citizens Advice Bureau, as per the recommendation from the Grants Panel meeting held on 25^th March 2015; and

2)    The 2014/15 underspend of £13,332 be allocated to the Council’s Framework Agreement for the provision of debt and budgeting advice.