Worcester City Council to cut grants to save money
Forecasts show the council could be £4 million in the red in the next four years.
The council is looking to cut the amount of money it offers in support to groups and organisations as part of the latest plan to save money.
Worcester City Council is struggling to balance its budget and is expected the gap in its finances to grow to £4 million in the next four years.
The latest money-saving plan by the council, which was backed by the councillors at a meeting in the Guildhall on July 25, will see £60,000 cut from grants in the next two years with another £113,000 cut by the end of by 2028.
The grants handed out by Worcester City Council range from bigger payments to Citizen’s Advice, Worcester Community Trust and the Lyppard Hub in Warndon to run the city’s essential community centres – two organisations that are, for the moment, set to be spared from budget cuts – but also smaller sums of money and ‘one-off’ payments to arts and cultural organisations and sports teams which will be the ones facing the chop.
The council said some of the smaller grants are paid for solely by tapping into its reserves and it is now looking to cut the amount it offers because its budget woes meant it ‘had to live within its means.’
The joint leader of the city council, Labour councillor Lynn Denham, said money was too tight to continue paying for ‘everything the council wanted.’
“The city council is no longer in a place where we can support everything that we want and I think particularly that grants are being funded from reserves is not a financially stable position,” she said at the policy and resources committee meeting.
“We can’t afford to give grants to other organisations, some of which have their own substantial reserves.”
The council’s managing director David Blake said it would be difficult for the council to argue that it should be trying to put an end to relying on reserves to fill budget gaps by depleting the reserves even further.
At the end of 2021, councillors voted to split grants into three categories with ‘large’ grants funded for five years, alongside ‘small’ grants of up to £5,000 and ‘one-off’ grants that would be used within the year.
Under the council’s current ‘small’ grants system, £3,500 goes to Worcester Arts Council to distribute to other cultural groups with £63,000 available for organisations to bid.
Last year, £45,000 of the ‘small’ grants were funded by the government from its ‘shared prosperity fund’ – which covers schemes that, among other things, ‘boosts productivity, jobs and living standards, improves public services, and empowers communities’ – and another £45,000 has been made available this year.
The council is now looking to scrap any grants that could not be paid for using ‘shared prosperity fund’ money – shaving £33,000 from the total available along with a suggestion that the maximum bid for £5,000 is cut or even halved.
Bids would be judged together rather than handed out on a first come first served basis and the rules for bidding would become more stringent with applications scored and ranked before final decisions are made.