A model council

Councils from Liverpool to Bromley have cut voluntary sector funding; but Reading Borough Council is defying the trend. It will increase its voluntary sector funding by more than £200,000 in 2011-12. This will be achieved by transferring £956,000 in loose grants to strict revenue contracts, which deliver greater value for money. This is part of a wider administrative rationalisation that raised an extra £181,000 for local groups, which will now apply for cash on a clearly specified basis to ensure that frugality survives the current efficiency drive.

An efficiency drive was certainly needed. The detailed appendices to Reading’s Budget Grants (here for commissioning intentions and here for information on grants, cuts and savings) reveal a pattern of questionable donations. An arts and crafts organisation specialising in handmade goods received £2,835 annually with no questions asked; and the local non-league football club received £2,690. Most of this expenditure has been eradicated or substantially reduced; but some remains. For instance, a community carnival that has failed to attract any local sponsorship will still receive £2,650 this year.

Most of all, the accounts reveal past flaws in allocating grants. Reading spends more than £250,000 a year on support for carers – including helplines, training initiatives, child day care and so forth. Few would contest that these services are anything other than essential; but the council concedes that some of its current arrangements, which excluded several local providers, are unsatisfactory. All existing contracts are now being retendered to improve value for money and quality of service through increased competition. Similarly, expensive contracts with the local solicitors and rights lawyers who advise welfare claimants are being re-evaluated after the council’s review suggested that such providers were ‘dependent only on [council] funding’. Reading Borough Council hopes that these renegotiations will reinvigorate the local voluntary and private sectors from their current stasis. But the near monopoly that some organisations have enjoyed is said to have had a deleterious effect on competitors, who now have to bid for grants under intensified scrutiny.

Privately, some Tories are heralding Reading as a model council. Certainly, it’s commitment to transparency, efficiency and protecting services is commendable (and highly unusual for local government). But there is some way to go to enact that these initiatives; and, there is still yet more to trim.