Content

RESOLVED:
 
Cabinet is recommended to :-
 
1. 
Agree the
timetable for the Hackney Voluntary and Community Sector Open
Grants Programme for 2024/25
 
2. 
Agree that
the following funding streams can be launched through the
programme:
 
· 
Project
Grants for up to £20,000 for one or two years from April
2024.
· 
Community
Chest grants for up to £1,000 for one year for short term
projects or one-off activities from April 2024 (with four grant
rounds spread throughout the year)
· 
Children
and Young people activity based grants of up to £20,000 over
one year totalling £225,000 from April 2024.
 
3. 
Agree the
second year of funding of advice grants 
as set out in Appendix  one, totalling
£922,500.
 
4. 
Note that
£77,826 remains set aside to meet some of the identified gaps
in provision and  provide additional
capacity to the advice system.
 
5. 
Agree one
year funding for Specialist grants totalling £719,066 as set
out in Appendix One.
 
6. 
Agree in
regards to Community Infrastructure grants to award a  third year of funding (of a total of three) for 20
Community Infrastructure organisations at £19,800 each per
annum  and a second year of funding ( of
a total of two) for four community infrastructure organisations at
£19,800 each.
 
7. 
Note the
carry over of £25,000 development
funding for Community Infrastructure that can be deployed to
support development and capacity building to enable gaps in
geography or community to be addressed.
 
8. 
To
continue to set aside £200,000 of the grant programme budget
provision for financial intervention for organisations at risk of
closure and delegate authority to approve grants to the Head of
Policy and Strategic Delivery in consultation with the Portfolio
Holder for Health, adult social care, voluntary sector and
leisure.
 
9. 
Agree to
use £65,000 of the grant program reserves  to increase 
organisational capacity in order to undertake a council wide
review  of our investment in the
VCS
 
10.Agree to contribute to the London borough’s
grant scheme administered by London Councils 2024/25 and note that
the contribution will be in the region of
£208,093
 
11.To delegate authority to approve the Project
Grants 2024/25 including Community Chest, Physical Activity and
Children and Young People’s Grants, as well as the deployment
of resources to address and/or meet any gaps and capacity in Advice
Services or Community Infrastructure grants, to the Head of Policy
and Strategic Delivery in consultation with the Portfolio Holder
for Health, adult social care, voluntary sector and leisure, and
the Portfolio Holder for education, young people and
children’s social care
 
REASONS FOR DECISION
 
Cabinet is asked to agree the funding criteria, timetable
and details of the Hackney Voluntary and Community Sector Grants
programme for 2024/25  as a key decision
of the Council as it affects two or more wards and is related to
Council spend. The indicative timetable is set out
below:
 

 

Project Grants*

Applications open

February 2024

Applications close

March 2024

Delegated authority decisions

May 2024

Recommendations to Cabinet

N/A

 
*Please note that 3 further rounds of Community Chest
grants will take place later in the year.
 
VCS Grants Programme for 2024/25 including Public Health
and Children and Young people grants

Grant Programme

Core

Budget

Other
funding*

Total

Project Grants (including general, Community Chest,
Children and Young People* and Physical Activity**)

£216,000

£207,500
 

£423,500

Advice Services (total budget including Public Health
contribution*** and funding to fill gaps thorough development
work)

£1,000,326

£120,000

£1,120,326

Community Infrastructure

£500,200

£0.00

£500,200

Specialist Grants

£719,066

£0.00

£719,066

Financial Intervention Support
Grants

£200,000

£0.00

£200,000

Total Grants Programme

£2,635,592

£327,500

£2,963,092

 
*£200,000 for the Children & Young People’s
Fund is from Young Hackney’s budget.
**7,500 from the Public Health Physical Activity budget for
the
***£120,000 contribution from the Public Health
budget
 
Reviewing how we invest in the
VCS
 
The review of the grants programme has enabled further
exploration and  opportunities to build
in equality focussed and anti-racist approaches to the delivery of
the investment. For example, assessor training now involves a
section on intersectionality and
institutional racism. We have also placed more emphasis on
supporting groups who are led by those with lived experience, and
have used information on organisational leadership and beneficiary
groups to make decisions in a more targeted way. We will continue
to build upon this for the 2024/25 programme.
 
Given the complexity of the challenges we are seeking to
address in the community and public sector, there are much more
effective and impactful ways to invest in the VCS than the
traditional approaches to commissioning through grant making or
procurement. Traditional approaches are transactional and
arms length and assume complex
challenges can be addressed through short term activity, focussing
on a narrow set of issues through simple projects and measurable
outputs. It also feeds into a wider set of behaviours and attitudes
that maintain a “parent child” relationship between the
public sector and the VCS.
 
Funders have been working on more effective models for a
number of years, and this very much aligns with the thinking
outlined about new approaches to public service. The grants
programme has been changed to take account of our experience of
working with the sector during the pandemic, the knowledge we have
gained from working with Advice providers and Community
Infrastructure partners, and the change and transformation we are
trying to achieve as a Council in how we work with communities. The
review has provided an opportunity to reflect on the
‘how’ and not just ‘what’ we
fund
 
This report proposes the use of £65,000 from the VCS
grants program reserves in order to increase capacity from March to
June 2024  to undertake a full review of
cross Council investment in the VCS. 
This will enable us to understand in quite granular detail what is
procured and grant funded across the council and the intended
outcomes from this investment.  Learning
from the council's work on anti-racism and other areas such as the
Public Health Match projects, as well as established thinking about
what approaches and service design are needed in the reform of the
public sector, supported by the RSA, New Local and the LGA, will
enable us to begin to redesign investment in the VCS that works
better for our residents.  This thinking
places greater value on addressing system failures, working across
silos and taking a more strength based and long-term view than the
current system which places greater value upon ease of measurement
and accountability.
 
Community Infrastructure
Grants
 
In 2023/24 we funded 24 Community Infrastructure
organisations.These are locality or
community based organisations that work preventatively, working
with communities at grassroots level to co-design services, build
local systems of support and help the Council to improve reach.
During the pandemic we were able to witness the expertise and reach
that these organisations have in their communities along with the
person-centred ways of working they adopt to meet the presenting
need and work with complexity. This was seen in place-based
organisations but also those working with particular communities
e.g black led organisations. This range
of community infrastructure utilised its strengths and assets,
flexing and adapting to the needs of individuals and communities.
At the same time they were promoting social inclusion, building
relationships with people and creating new connections. Community
infrastructure proved to be a crucial resource during the pandemic
and yet for many years there has been little or no direct
investment in this.
 
This activity is key to a preventative agenda that seeks to
build upon the assets within communities, as well as helping to
respond to the Cost of Living crisis. Although our commitment to
fund is over three years in the first year our focus has been to
collaborate with each organisation to explore and
identify,
· 
What they need to
measure in order to reflect on their practice and improve outcomes
for residents through their activity and across the
system
· 
More systemic
collaborative ways of working and what challenges/benefits does
this bring
· 
The sharing of
learning and influencing practice.
 
The Community Infrastructure organisations have been
partnered with 24 Relational Leads. These are all volunteer
officers from across the Council committed to developing the
programme further, developing ways of helping Council services to
work more meaningfully and effectively with community partners, and
strengthening our way of working on early help and prevention
across the lifecourse. The work of the
Relational Leads is supported and coordinated by the System
Convenor roles within the Policy and Strategic Delivery
Team.
 
Project Grants
 
As already set out, we intend to broadly continue with our
existing programme objectives and equality aims, which guide
applicants on the outcomes we are seeking to achieve from the
grants programme, but with a renewed focus on specific beneficiary
groups who are being particularly affected by the cost of living
crisis. Whilst we are reprioritisng our
investment to protect and develop community infrastructure we will
continue to invest part of the programme in short-term project
based activity.
 
We will continue to run our open programme as our Project
Grants rather than Main and Small Grants from previous years. The
Project Grants strand will encompass generic Project Grants,
Children and Young People’s Grants (discussed further in
4.4), and Community Chest Physical Activity grants. Responding to
feedback from applicants last year it is intended to offer two year
grants where possible for the Project Grants in 2024/25 to ensure
alignment and consistency between the funding streams.
 
Grant funding Children and Young
People’s activity
 
Building on the last 2 years this grants scheme
specifically for children and young people will use a budget that
in previous years had been deployed for one-off commissioning of
youth activity by the Children and Families Service. The funding
will be prioritised for the identified health and wellbeing needs
of young people within the eight Primary Care Networks of the
Integrated Care Partnership. However as with all grants in the
programme the ability to ensure geographical spread across the
borough will be dependent upon the spread of applications
received.
 
The grants will be for one year youth work projects.
Applicants will be asked to  focus on
youth work methodology and may include specialist providers for a
variety of activities including sport, drama and film. As with the
wider grants programme the activities for children and young people
should speak to anti racist and
anti oppressive practices so that
provision is inclusive and seeks to promote equality. Grant funding
rather than commissioning should enable more collaborative working
both with the Council and between VCS organisations that are
funded. This in turn should ensure additionality from the resources being
used.
 
Advice grants
 
Our advice partners continue to be central to the vital
work of the VCS in supporting residents through the CoLC. Ongoing work with organisations has increased
the levels of collaboration and partnership within the advice
system but also other VCS organisations responding to the material
impacts of poverty in Hackney. Last year we conducted an open
application process to ensure that we have a network of advice
partners that can respond to the various needs of the communities
of Hackney.
 
The process resulted in funding to nineteen advice partners
outlined in Appendix 2. Of these advice partners one was new to
receiving a social welfare advice grant. To determine the level of
funding to award the panel, focused on funding an advice system for
Hackney, considered shortlisted advice partners’ capacity,
specialism and potential increases demand for support from
particular Black and Global Majority communities or those affected
by legislative changes (e.g. No Recourse to Public Funds,
Employment Rights). 
 
Following completion of the assessment process it was
identified that although officers have recommended funding for an
extensive advice offer there is a noticeable gap in provision in
the north of Hackney. Some work has been undertaken to remedy this
by embedding an advice worker in a health setting in the north of
the borough in partnership with the Together Better  initiative  which
includes immigration advice. Recognising the likelihood that
serving specific cultural and religious residents/ communities in
this area of the borough will not readily travel to funded
provisions located elsewhere or due to unfamiliarity with
particular advice partners, officers propose to continue to retain
some funding from the advice budget specifically to explore
possible options with organisations established in that
locality.
 
Specialist Grants
 
Following the full review of Specialist Grants completed in
2017, another review was initiated last year in order to identify
where investment should be focused in the future. A local Community
Anchor organisation assisted the Council in this review. This not
only ensured external challenge but drew upon the
organisation’s understanding of the local VCS as well as
their learning from the different perspectives from working
directly with communities, the providers of services and the
investors in communities. The findings will help inform proposals
in 2024/25 on the implementation of the grants review.
 
As we continue through the 2024/25 Grants Programme to
focus on CoLC, Specialist Grants are
also being considered in this context. Through the relational ways
that the Council’s Grants Team work with partners they will
be exploring on a case-by-case basis how each organisation
is  responding to the CoLC. These organisations have been funded at the
current rate for a number of years, which effectively means that
their grant has decreased in value quite significantly.  Last year given the rising costs for VCS
organisations a 10% inflationary uplift 
was applied.
 
DETAILS OF ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS CONSIDERED AND
REJECTED
 
Given the budgetary pressures facing the Council the future
of the VCS Grants Programme is regularly reviewed. However
consideration has been given to the reductions in public spending
through welfare cuts and reduced grants to local government which
can lead to increased demands upon the VCS. The unique position of
the VCS to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable and
disadvantaged residents as well as its ability to deliver added
value e.g. through inward investment and volunteering necessitates
a grant programme that ensures that the sector can continue to
thrive and build resilience to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic
and in the face of further budget reductions.
 
Whilst procurement resources the VCS, the investment
through the Council’s grants programme helps to maintain a
thriving third sector and a wide range of suppliers. Funding the
sector through grants ensures that it can identify new needs and
new ideas and innovate and test new solutions. It enables added
value activity that complements direct or procured service delivery
and can fund open universal activity. The sector is also able to
use grant funding to respond to specific challenges in regards to
community cohesion by providing grassroots community based activity
that builds cohesion and community action and the support that is
needed by our most disadvantaged and vulnerable
residents.