Councillors for some years now have received a pot of money annually to distribute to activities and projects that benefit the local community. The sum is not a large one, and totals only £8,000 per year. The pot is called the Community Ward Budget.
In Coulsdon Town in the past year alone local councillors have used the money for a wide variety of causes including: buying equipment for scouts, funding neighbourhood watch schemes, helping homeless initiatives, supporting the Indian Holi festival, Croydon Pride, installing defibrillators, buying a dishwasher for an elderly group, putting up a noticeboard in a park as well as signs to mark a footpath, improvements to schools infrastructure, fitting new doors to the outside of Croydon Football Club, and supporting health-focused charities.
These are just a few examples of where a small contribution goes a long way.
However, due to the mess that the current administration running the Council have got into, going forward Community Ward Budgets have been cancelled. Croydon Council has issued a Section 114 notice and has had emergency spending restrictions imposed on it by the government, and as a result all Community Ward Budget spending is frozen.
For the ward's budget, that means there is now around £20,000 that will now be unavailable for allocation this coming year, so apologies to the community groups that contacted us to apply for funding and those that we were in dialogue with about supporting their worthy projects.
It is the shame of the current administration, by its avoidable waste and profligacy, that it has allowed such a parlous state of affairs to occur in the borough’s finances, with the result that even small community projects cannot now be funded.
