Agenda item

To consider and comment on the update regarding how the Council plans to maintain an appropriate oversight and management of grant funding to the voluntary and community sector in future.

The Committee received an update on the latest arrangements regarding how the council planned to maintain an appropriate oversight and management of grant funding to the voluntary and community sector and how it would ensure that a strategic relationship with the sector continued to deliver the aspirations of the Corporate Plan.

Key documents issued by the council, particularly the Sandwell Compact and the Voluntary and Community Sector Funding Protocol, outlined how the relationship between the council and the voluntary organisations and the provision of grants was governed.

A voluntary sector grants working group led by the former Executive Director of Neighbourhoods in 2018/19 had recommended establishing a centralised budget for grants paid to the voluntary and community sector and implementing more robust monitoring to create a collective overview of activity. This approach was agreed by leadership team of the council in February 2020 and led to the establishment of the Investing in the Voluntary and Community Sector Strategic Group (IITVCS group).

Limited progress had been made due to factors including changes in the council’s senior leadership team and a focus on the Covid-19 pandemic.

The main challenge in terms of oversight was that commissioners from different directorates had been using different approaches to how they awarded and monitored grant funding. There was also a lack of information sharing across directorates to enable an organisational understanding of what activity was being funded across the sector and the outcomes derived from such funding. This fragmented approach resulted in lack of strategic ownership and direction at leadership level.

In October 2021, the leadership team agreed to centralise the voluntary sector support grant budget but retain commissioning responsibility within directorates. This would result in the overall budget for grant funding being centralised into the Business Strategy and Change directorate, along with the administration of issuing grants and the Director for Business Strategy and Change would formally take the lead on developing and managing the organisation’s relationship with the sector, whilst decision making on the allocation of grants would be retained by the IITVCS group.

The Director of Business Strategy and Change was to lead on developing and maintaining the council’s relationship with the voluntary and community sector. Decision making on the allocation of grants would be retained by the strategic group consisting of directors who funded voluntary sector activity within their areas.

Directorates would retain responsibility for identifying where grants would add to/support the delivery of desired outcomes and retain knowledge of and relationships with relevant local organisations. Any changes to grant arrangements or new grants, however, would now need to be agreed corporately via the Voluntary & Community Sector Strategic Group (IITVCS group).

These arrangements necessitated a more robust financial reporting on grants and activity, along with a good working relationship between commissioners and the IITVCS group. It would also provide clear governance arrangements for decision making and provide stronger foundations for beginning to build an effective strategic relationship with the sector.

The following was noted in response to comments and questions:

·      It was clarified that at present each directorate retained its allotted grant funding within its own budget and would make decisions and payments using that budget.

·      Once sufficient progress had been made, the Committee would receive regular updates as there would be a central record of all the funding released by the council to voluntary organisations along with reasons why the grant was given.

·      Each grant made to the voluntary organisation was currently captured in the budget of the directorate making that grant. In the next financial year, all grants would be recorded in a central budget (under Directorate of Business Strategy and Change) to provide oversight of all payments made by the council. Directorates had been assured they would retain control over what they contributed to the voluntary sector.

·      Currently the grants being paid out were subject to verification in the form of schemes of delegation in place and the strategic group which was overseeing any future grant awards. This provided independent verification separate from individual directorates that were awarding the money.

·      In future, there would be a proposal and rationale behind what the grants were awarded for which would be examined by the Council’s Leadership Team.

·      The central record of the grants paid to voluntary sector was to be finalised within the next few weeks and the snapshot of that record would be presented to the Committee at the next meeting.