It appears I rattled a few cages amongst the ruling Labour Group earlier this week when I proposed a motion on how grant aid is allocated by Reading Borough Council (which was discussed on Tuesday evening).
In case you were not aware, the amount of money handed over by Reading Borough Council to voluntary sector and community groups this year currently stands at over £2.5m.
And yet, If you asked me to come up with two words to describe the current process the Council goes through to allocate this substantial some of money the words 'open' and 'transparent' would not spring to mind.
Don't get me wrong, my Lib Dem colleagues and I firmly believe in the value of the voluntary sector in Reading and the need for the Council to continue to support it. This ongoing commitment was clearly spelt out in my motion to Council.
However, where tax payer's money is concerned, in our view it is vital for public confidence that any decisions are made openly and subject to regular scrutiny.
As a backbencher, sorry, 'frontline' councillor, I was only dimly aware of the process by which Council funding for voluntary and community groups is agreed each year so I decided to make a few enquiries.
The current system is as follows according to officer briefings I received...
Officers also write to the applicants with the officer recommendation followings these briefings, giving them a chance to ask for a review of the application in case there is any new information we should be aware of; a change in circumstances; or if they feel that they have not been fairly treated. Lead Councillors then decide whether or not the application should be supported at Cabinet and it is Cabinet that makes the decision about whether or not to support an individual grant.
Under the current regime, the involvement of members from other political parties is limited to group briefings. These briefings are offered fairly late in the process (in December), shortly before the matter goes to Cabinet.
The aim of these briefings apparently is to give other political groups ‘the chance to air any concerns.'
The Review Panel' referred to above consists of the Lead Councillor for Communities and Regeneration (currently Cllr Tickner) and a senior policy officer at RBC.
This officer is not involved in the grants process up until this point. Cllr Tickner has the overall responsibility for grants, while officers provide advice and background information.
The Panel does not meet in public and minutes (if they exist at all) are not available to councillors or the public.
The report which goes to Cabinet in January each year summarises the application and the outcome of the Panel's discussions, so I was told. This report acts as the record of the (Review Panel) meeting.
You can read the most recent report here which was rubber stamped on 19 January. It contains an appendix detailing all the groups which benefited from Council cash and details of unsuccessful applications.
What my Group and I are not comfortable with is the lack of scrutiny and involvement of non-executive councillors in the grant aid application process.
Surely the decision to allocate grant aid funding should be above narrow Party interest and besomething that all members should be involved in as a Council?
The way the current system is set up the fact that one councillor both recommends and reviews grant application applications mitigates against a transparent approach and leaves it potentially open to politicians supporting pet projects or favouring/ignoring particular groups.
As I said in my speech on Tuesday evening, the process of allocating substantial amounts of public money, should it in an away appear to lack openness, has the potential to damage politics and politicians. As guardians of the public purse in Reading we must all do our best to avoid such impressions.
When I discussed this issue with Conservative members ahead of Tuesday's meeting I detected similar concern about the lack of transparency in the current process, and support for reform which we had proposed.
Unsurprisingly,the response from Labour councillors during the meeting to the motion being tabled was both defensive and arrogant: they queued up to pour scorn on my efforts. How dare a non-Labour councillor wish to investigate something so clearly within the domain of the ruling group for so many years, was the infererence I took from their shrill response.
Without calling me in advance to discuss her concerns, Cllr Tickner put forward a poorly drafted amendment the aim of which was to attempt to limit the scope of any future CCEA Scrutiny Panel review of the grant aid process to exclude past funding decisions.
We couldn't accept this change so we abstained and the Conservatives along with Labour backed the amended motion.
As my colleague Cllr Bayes pointed out during the debate, how can future decision-making be improved if previous decisions are not looked into? We were not asking for previous decisions to be changed, but simply to be reviewed in general terms as part of a review of the process.
Anyway, to cut a long story short despite the ruling Labour Group's attempts to stop us from throwing more light on the process by which grant aid decisions are made in Reading, I am pleased to say the matter will be the subject of a future CCEA Scrutiny Panel review.
In my view this is not before time.
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