Councillor Norman Marshall

Agenda

The meeting began with a recitation of the Quran by the Mayor's Faith Leader, Ali Jafri. The Council then approved an update to the council's capital spending plans, despite some abstentions from Conservative councillors. Two motions were then considered. The first, proposed by the Labour administration, was a general statement in support of children's safety and wellbeing and was passed despite opposition from the Conservative group. The second, proposed by the Conservatives, expressed concern at the loss of winter fuel payments for many pensioners and called on the Council to take steps to provide for those affected. This motion was defeated, with the Conservatives voting in favour and Labour against. The meeting concluded with the reception of reports from several committees.

Agenda

The committee received a petition from Wandsworth Friends of Palestine requesting that the council divest from companies that invest in Israel. After hearing from the petitioners and officers, it was decided to ask officers to evaluate options for responding to the petition and report back to a future meeting. The committee also reviewed the Pension Fund Annual Report, quarterly investment performance report, and received an update on several general matters including the pooling of bond investments and the proposed merger of the Nuveen UKPF fund.

Agenda

Meeting

Agenda

The Grants Sub-Committee met to decide which organisations would receive grants from the Voluntary Sector Cost of Living Grant Fund and the Wandsworth Grant Fund. In total the committee recommended six applications from the Cost of Living Grant fund, for a total of £61,375, and eight from the Wandsworth Grant Fund, for a total of £76,856. During the discussion of the applications, there was some debate over whether the committee should take into account previous grants an organisation had received from the council when making their decisions, and there was also some debate over the criteria of the cost of living grant, with some councillors feeling that some otherwise good projects were not being funded because they did not meet the specific cost of living criteria.