A bit of a spat about a “rumoured”  reduction in Citizens’ Advice Funding by ‘Your Waverley.’

Will The final details of grants awarded to the borough’s Community Groups be revealed at tomorrow’s important Budget Meeting?

 An additional one-off amount of £49k  for one year has been allocated to specific organisations to support them through this transitional funding year in addition to the usual council’s ‘Thriving Communities Fund.’

However,  there are no papers up on Waverley’s website giving funding figures for any of the recipient individual organisations!

C ONFUSION.COM

Within moments of publishing this post we received this update from Paul Follows Waverley’s Leader.WBC CAW statement

The lack of information is causing angst among the Tory Group as rumours are rife that the CAB’s grant has been slashed.

Tory Opposition Leader Cllr Stephen Mulliner puffed himself up into a frenzy over the possibility that Waverley’s treasured CAB organisation was rumoured to be losing out on vital funding.

Only to be told that Surrey County Council was lobbing a huge £50,000 of county taxpayer funding into Waverley CAB’s coffers, so it wasn’t losing out.

He complained that the individual grant allocations from Waverley’s ‘Thriving Communities Fund’ would not be given until after the Council meeting had agreed the budget tomorrow  22 February, which he felt was “not transparent,”  allowing no time for scrutiny. 

Is that the tiny patter of a row we hear coming on?

He claimed that a rumoured reduction in funding for CAB’s services would be hugely damaging, at a time when residents needed its services more than ever.   He urged the Executive to consider giving it £60,000 in grant aid. 

His rant was followed by another from Cllr Michael Goodridge who was outraged that a reduction to the vital service was being considered, or as  rumoured,  “had been actually agreed.” The organisation was already making cuts to services offered in Cranleigh and elsewhere.

However, no amount of assurances that the CAB was not losing out would placate the Tories.

 Leader Paul Follows said  Waverley’s Town and Parish Councils had their individual Service Level Agreements with Citizen’s Advice, and therefore these would need to be renegotiated.

The CAB was also receiving other sources of funding, including £60,000 from Surrey County Council. Clarification would be provided when the figures were known and a meeting would be held with CAB’s Chief Executive Officer to clarify future funding.

Waverley and Surrey County Councillor Councillor Liz Townsend confirmed further money would be available from the county council and its  officers were supporting CAB  to reorganise themselves to best meet the needs of residents.

Councillor Mark Merryweather acknowledged that any change was difficult and there were demands on all organisations to meet their needs with dwindling resources, through no fault of the organisations in question. However, he reminded the Executive that the decision was for the allocation of a budget to the Thriving Communities fund and how that fund was allocated was not for consideration.

So when will the funding information be available councillors and community organisations are asking?

Full Information on Waverley’s ‘Thriving Communities Fund.’

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