Council forced to cut third sector grants as budget cuts bite (From The Northern Echo)

Council forced to cut third sector grants as budget cuts bite

10:20am Thursday 9th February 2012 in Darlington

COUNCIL members have spoken of their regret after they were forced to cut funding to third sector groups across the town in the face of budget cuts.

Darlington Borough Council leader Bill Dixon said members needed the “wisdom of Solomon” to decide which groups would be turned down for funding.

A record number of organisations applied for strategic grant funding worth £590,000 from the council this year, despite the amount of money on offer being cut by 15 per cent to £176,000.

Of 21 organisations that applied, six will receive funding after meeting a number of criteria set by an advisory panel.

The successful groups are the Darlington Citizens’ Advice Bureau, Age UK, the Darlington Credit Union, Groundwork UK, Darlington Association on Disability and homeless charity First Stop.

More than £45,000 was also ring-fenced for volunteer and community co-ordination group eVOLution.

Coun Dixon said: “It’s difficult to say who we would cut off. It really does require the wisdom of Solomon.

“We need to look at the effect on the town but it’s difficult to invest when we are technically bankrupt. At a time when we should be investing in quality of life stuff, we are being forced away from it by budget cuts.”

The meeting was addressed by Jason Berge, a member of visual arts co-operative the Darlington Media Group, which has missed out on £15,000 of funding.

He said: “We feel that we have provided the community with a great service for the last 30 years on a shoe string budget and provided the community with much value for money.

“To see both our premises at the Darlington Arts Centre and our funding cut in the same year is very hard to take as an organisation and it’s not just us that will be affected.”

Councillor Andrew Scott, cabinet member for health and partnership, said: “This was always going to be a difficult issue. It was highly competitive - no recipient received what they wanted because we could not make the money stretch that far. There are simply not enough funds to go round and I’m sorry to say that some worthy organisations missed out.”