15
Management Committee
1 December 2015
Improvements to External Funding Practice
For Decision
Briefholder(s)
Cllr J Cant, Finance & Assets
Senior Leadership Team Contact : S Hill, Strategic Director
1. Purpose of Report
1.1
To respond to Councillor Roebuck’s Notice of Motion, which “ instructs its
Senior Management Team to include in the remit of one of the team, the clear
responsibility to pro-actively seek out and pursue the opportunities for such
funding in the future”.
2. Officer Recommendations
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
That responsibility for and strategic co-ordination of external funding is
allocated to those officers who are most appropriate depending upon the
specific grant funding project or application.
That Members receive regular information on funding opportunities.
That a team of officers across council services are identified to lead bids and
these receive appropriate training.
That resources are identified to support training and use of external experts in
bid writing.
That this committee receives a further report on progress with the proposed
improvements in paragraph 5.7 of this report.
3. Reasons for Recommendation
3.1
To build on and improve the current success of the council in attracting
external funding to support services that meet the needs of Weymouth and
Portland communities
4. Background Information
4.1
In 23 July, 2015 at Full Council, Councillor Roebuck tabled a Notice of Motion
because of concerns about the relative position of Weymouth and Portland
Borough Council in drawing down external funding to the Borough. It read:
“This Council, recognising the settled policy of the government to increase the
proportion of its capital funding for local government which is allocated by
grant for specific projects, and the limited success this council has had in the
past for attracting such funds, instructs its Senior Management Team to
include in the remit of one of the team, the clear responsibility to pro-actively
seek out and pursue the opportunities for such funding in the future.”
4.2
This report responds to this Notice of Motion and is not restricted to capital
grant funding from the Government because the issues of success cover both
capital and revenue funding from all external sources. Councillor Roebuck has
confirmed that he is happy for the report to address wider grant funding
recommendations in order to improve the success of bringing external capital
and revenue funding from any external source.
5. Report
5.1
In June 2013, a report on grant funding was tabled at Management
Committee. The report proposed improvements in relation to the Council’s
external and internal funding practice that optimised resources for delivery of
key actions in the Corporate Plan and strategic priorities in the Weymouth and
Portland Community Strategy.
5.2
Following a recommendation in this report, the council established an annual
register of grants received and made by the council. This has been reported
for the past two years, thus providing a clearer picture of all grant awards into
and out of the council. Examples of council success in attracting external
funding are:



The 2014-15 grants register detailed successful capital funding of
£456,058 and a revenue total of £2,470,068.
Council budgets also used to provide match funding for external
funding. Examples are:
- Community Protection’s provision of £5,000 to match fund a health
& wellbeing project fund with Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group
- Funding for the Esplanade coastal defence from Dorset LEP will
require a 60% contingency and match funding from the Council and
other sources.
Weymouth and Portland Community Partnership has also been
successful in the last three years levering in funding from various such
as NHS Dorset and Dorset County Council for local projects. Recent
successes are £8,000 Government Our Place funding for Melcombe
Regis and £10,000 for a Weymouth Coastal Communities Team with a
decision pending on a £42,000 Weyfinder project for town centre
signage from the Coastal Revival Fund
5.3
Key council officers also receive project management training following
another of the report’s recommendations.
5.4
Three report recommendations were not pursued. These were:
i.
ii.
iii.
5.5
5.6
That a named officer in each Directorate is responsible for receiving and
distributing grant information and assisting in grant applications to increase
awareness of grant availability and effectiveness of external grant
applications.
That the officers referred to in the recommendation above sit on a corporate
officer and member advisory funding forum. This forum will advise on the coordination of grant applications by and grants from the Council.
That the Council adopts a strategic approach to external grant funding at
Management Team and that opportunities are actively pursued in relation to
involving partners in strategic funding applications.
The emergence of the Tri-Council Partnership and changes to local
government funding since the original report on external grant funding mean
that the council is now operating in a changed funding environment. It is
therefore timely to revisit success in attracting external capital and revenue
funding for WPBC and also to look at the potential for smarter working across
the Tri-Council Partnership.
It is important to recognise that the capital funding landscape has changed
significantly in recent years with changes to Government funding. Officer
experience is that central government is progressively reducing capital grants
for flood, coastal erosion management and harbours, devolving some funds to
Local Enterprise Partnerships and expecting shortfalls to be met from
European sources and contributions form those who benefit. This approach is
likely to cause local difficulties in relation to coastal and flood defence to deal
with rising sea levels and harbour repair where there is limited commercial
income. Examples of this are:

LEPs bid for Government funds on the basis of Strategic Economic
Plans aimed at delivering growth, so funds previously earmarked for
flood and coastal erosion management often go elsewhere.

EU Structural Investment Fund, European Regional Development Fund
and European Social Fund appear to offer little for coastal work. The
European Maritime and Fisheries Fund may provide very limited
support if commercial fishing facilities are improved.

The Environment Agency allocates Defra funding to manage flood and
coastal erosion risks known as Flood Defence Grant in Aid available to
local authorities. Defra policy determines what proportion of the cost of
a scheme can be funded by Government, depending on costs and
benefits and other outcome measures. Harbour grants were ended
about 10 years ago. Harbour works are not classed as coast defence
and don’t qualify for FDGiA except to the extent that they help to
prevent flooding.

The EA’s partnership funding calculator indicates that currently coastal
erosion and flood management works proposed for central Weymouth
would qualify for FDGiA of about 20% if WPBC could secure £76M in
other contributions. Some funding may come from local Community
Infrastructure Levy, or the sources outlined above, but at least £56M
would need to come from local authorities, residents and businesses
that would benefit from the works (see report to September WPBC
Policy Committee attached).
5.7
There are, however, a number of areas in which the council could improve its
external funding strategy working both as a sovereign council and also within
the Tri-Council Partnership. These are as follows:
I.
Strategic priorities
The Council needs to apply for external funding in line with established
corporate priorities rather than grasping opportunistically at funding streams.
The council should adopt a strategic approach applying for external funding
that fits within a framework of the Council’s strategic priorities. This will
provide political commitment to the process and a clear evidence base for
funding applications. This will avoid a lack of forward preparation that dilutes
the quality of the application and is not a sound use of staff resource.
II.
Bid readiness – Intelligence gathering
Any bid for capital or revenue funding requires a readily available reservoir of
information to provide the evidence base supporting the bid. This could
include statistical data relating to service delivery or local demographics,
qualitative information such as customer comments and service profiling. The
Council needs to be smarter about how it keeps or accesses this type of
information as it needs to be readily available. Bid readiness is paramount
especially when the timescale for response is invariably tight.
Officers are currently exploring how we can work more closely with Dorset
County Council on the statistics it collates and is also examining use of the
UK Data Archive which allows free access to all publically available data
including research.
III.
Quality of the bid and Relationship with Funders
The success of a bid is largely governed by the quality of the bid writing and
the relationship with the funding body. The quality of the bid is an important
success factor although the number of funding pots that are oversubscribed is
should not be ignored. The council needs to ensure that it has sufficient staff
with experience of bid-writing and the ability to access expert external
resources where these are required.
Bid-writing training across a spread of officers would be advisable. Many
major funders provide briefings and are prepared to meet locally. Both
opportunities should be more widely accessed and officers identified to
attend. Funding, where necessary, should be provided on a “spend to
accrue”basis.
IV.
Officer and member awareness of funding opportunities
The Council accesses Grants Online and Grantfinder under a Dorset County
Council sub-licence available to the West Dorset and Weymouth and Portland
Council Partnership. An overall picture of those accessing this information is
required as many previous subscribees have left the organisation and new
names need to be added. This will also provide the opportunity to ask DCC if
a sub-licence is possible for the Tri-Council Partnership. is a shared
responsibility across Council services and does not rest with one team!
V.
Co-ordinated approach to funding
The Council requires a more co-ordinated approach to funding awareness,
decision-making and application within a clear framework for prioritising
funding bids. This requires strategic leadership to enable this and an
established way of enabling “bid agility” so that appropriate external funding
opportunities are not missed. Allocated responsibility for forwarding grant
information across the Council and enabling bid readiness is also required.
VI.
Relationship building with key funders and partners
The maxim of “who” you now rather than “what” you know often applies to
both knowledge of forthcoming funding streams and the success of
applications. This has been demonstrated by the successful “Our Place”
funding and the Coastal Communities Teams where officer relationships with
the funders have been a factor in the success of the bids. This area of work
needs to be expanded if the Council is to place more emphasis on external
funding.
Bidding often requires letters of support from key partners so it is important to
maintain good communications and nurture relationships for this eventuality.
VII.
Availability of match funding
The capital funding landscape has changed significantly in recent years.
Many capital funding sources require significant match funding. This is
particularly true of DEFRA in relation to provision of funding for coastal
defences. Councils who are cash poor will struggle to attract funding for
coastal defence projects and no funding is available for harbours.
Applications to such sources will require careful planning and innovative and
medium to long-term approaches to raising the necessary match funding.
The council is also called upon to provide a degree of match funding to
enable external funding to be brought into the Borough. Consideration should
be given to creation of a corporate reserve fund for match funding.
VIII.
Shared learning
Currently there is no internal cross Council approach to sharing information at
the time of bidding so as to avoid internal competition. A more co-ordinated
strategic approach to bidding would remove the risk of this.
There is currently no forum for sharing learning about external funding. This
would be a useful Tri-Council forum or even wider. This sharing of information
and tips about improving success could make all the difference to council’s
success. Consideration should be given to information- sharing such as an
on-line resource, lunchtime seminars or even a multi-service working group.
Member knowledge of external funding should also be improved so as to
allow the freer flow of funding information out into communities and also to
avoid misconceptions about the outcomes of funding applications.
6. Financial Implications
6.1
Leverage of external funding into the Borough will help support essential
environmental projects such as flood defences and enable the delivery of
other services and projects for which funding is pressured.
Other Considerations:
7. Legal/Statutory Power
7.1
No specific power applies to the decision about grant funding.
8. Human Resources (including Health & Safety)
8.1
Grant funding work is currently undertaken through mainstream budgets or
where specialist advice is required, funded through external grants.
9. Risk Management
9.1
Ineffective management of external grant funding could result in the failure to
attract much-needed funding to support local projects which meet the needs
of Weymouth and Portland Borough and its residents.
10. Reputation, including Communications and Consultation
(Including comments from unions on decisions affecting
staffing arrangements)
10.1


The Council could be subject to reputational risk due to the following:
Failure to adopt a strategic approach to applications for external funding
meaning that the Council does not make best use of staff resources
Perceived failure maximise bidding to support the key priorities of the Borough
and its residents.
11. Equalities
11.1 Most social, cultural and leisure funding providers require consideration of the
impacts of funded projects and activities on the protected characteristics
introduced by The Equality Act 2010.
11.2 Equality monitoring should be taken for all grants made by the council and
included in an annual report.
12. Crime and Disorder
12.1 Improvements to external grant leverage and targeting of internal resources
would potentially have a positive effect on crime and disorder matters by
funding projects which mitigate against or tackle the root causes.
13. Environmental Considerations
13.1 The future ability of the council to draw down additional funding from sources
other than the Government for flood, coastal defence and harbour repair work
will require smarter practice on the part of the Council.
14. Economic Impact Assessment
14.1 Is the proposal likely to lead to an increase in the level of skills needed in the
local workforce? Yes, where external funding improves training, skills
development and job creation.
14.2 Is the proposal likely to lead to growth in local employment? Yes as in 14.1
above
14.3 Is the proposal likely to lead to growth in the number of businesses? Possibly
as for 14.1 above
14.4 If the overall economic implications are seen as negative what mitigating
factors have been considered? The purpose of this report’s recommendations
is to take mitigating action to ensure better success in securing external
funding
15. Corporate Plan (links to corporate aims & priorities)
15.1 External funding could potentially support all the council aims.
15.2 Grants made by the council are currently direct in support of the following
priorities:
A2. Improving infrastructure to enable businesses to grow
B1. Preventing homelessness and supporting communities to meet their
housing needs
B2. Working with partners to improve public health and wellbeing
C2. Protecting and enhancing the built and natural environment
C3. Managing the implications of climate change, including flooding and
coastal protection
16. Appendices
16.1
None
17. Background Documents (including relevant policy documents)
17.1
WPBS Annual Register of Grants for the Financial Year 2014-15
Report Author & Contact: Jane Nicklen, Community Planning & Development
Manager
Telephone: 01305 252358
Email: jnicklen@dorset.gov.uk