Report of the Assistant Chief Executive

This report providesan update on the OMVCS funding programme for 2023-26. The report describes the steps that have been taken to complete the funding assessment process, and details which organisations will be funded by the programme from 1 April 2023, subject to approval of the Council’s annual budget and due diligence.

The report goes on to outline the background and process for developing the Supporting Communities Fund, and details the organisations in scope for it, subject to the same conditions above. The report describes the support available across both programmes for funded groups and for unsuccessful applicants.

The Committee considered the report of the Assistant Chief Executive which provided an update on the OMVCS funding programme for 2023-26.

Key points and themes in the report included:

• Application process overview;
• Assessment Panel overview;
• Identification of strategic gap;
• Supporting Communities Fund; and
• Support for applicants.

Some of the key points that arose from the Committee’s discussions were: -

• To welcome that additional funding had been secured;
• Strong concern that the organisations which had received funding through the OMVCS Fund were predominantly from central Manchester and that north Manchester and Wythenshawe were seriously under-represented;
• That some of the organisations which the report stated were delivering in specific wards were not known to Ward Councillors or were not delivering services in that ward but rather delivering services elsewhere which residents of that ward could travel to access and that Ward Councillors had not been asked for their input;
• The importance of funding organisations which had knowledge of their specific localities, rather than just organisations working across many areas;
• Were some organisations duplicating work, leaving gaps elsewhere, or were under-served communities being targeted;
• Why some organisations had been successful and others not, for example, a housing association in one area receiving funding, while a housing association in another area was unsuccessful;
• What work would be done to ensure that the successful organisations did deliver what they had promised;
• Could a breakdown of protected characteristics for successful and unsuccessful organisations be provided;
• Support for organisations which had not been successful in obtaining funding;
• Concern that organisations which did not have the knowledge of how to submit good funding applications were at a disadvantage;
• That the focus of the work going forward should be on how the Fund and the process could be improved to better serve communities in Manchester, particularly more deprived areas, and not just focus on how VCSE organisations could improve;
• That smaller organisations which were doing really good work should be given the opportunity to receive funding, in preference to some of the bigger organisations which had received funding for many years;
• That voluntary organisations were having to provide services which should be provided by the state and to recognise the difficulty in having to make decisions on these applications when the funding was limited;
• Concern that there was a lack of diversity on the assessment panel and could service users be on the panel; and
• To request that a meeting be arranged for Committee Members to discuss this further.

The Policy and Programmes Manager (Communities and VCSE) reported that work had taken place with the aim of increasing funding to north Manchester and BAME- led and BAME-serving organisations and that there had been some improvements but he recognised that more work needed to be done.  He reported that a degree of diversity had been built into the co-design process and the panel process, including encouraging an awareness of the risk of bias.  He advised that a piece of work had been carried out looking at the organisations which had been recommended by the panel to check that it would not be duplicating Council investment for the same activity in the same organisation.  In response to a question from the Chair, the Assistant Chief Executive clarified that organisations could receive other funding from the Council but that checks had been carried out to ensure that it was not for the same work.

The Assistant Chief Executive reported that three-quarters of the successful organisations had said that they would be delivering services in north Manchester but that his team would need to look at the details of what this meant in practice.  He highlighted the development fund, which would help organisations to be in a better position to bid for funding and advised that it would be targeting areas of the city where organisations had not applied to the OMVCS Fund.  He reported that some of the organisations which had been successful in being awarded OMVCS Funding had been successful last time while others were new.  He advised that there was a comprehensive scoring process determining which organisations were awarded funding, including looking at whether they met the aims of the Fund, the quality of the organisation and their ability to deliver for Manchester residents.  He advised that the due diligence process included looking at where organisations were delivering services and that this would also be built into the monitoring of the programme.  He informed Members that an annual report would be produced on the 60 organisations in the two programmes and that this would monitor the impact of the organisations, comparing it to what they said they would deliver.  He drew Members’ attention to the detail in the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) but added that more work would be taking place to understand the different groups served by the organisations.  He acknowledged a Member’s point about the broad area headings of north, central and south Manchester including within them very different wards and stated that some further work would be done on this.  He reported that the panel members had been given training to try to ensure that organisations which had skills in writing good quality applications were not unfairly advantaged over those who did not have the same level of bid-writing skills.  He highlighted the support that Macc would be providing to organisations. 

The Strategic Lead (Resources and Programmes) reported that a number of workshops had been held over the summer to help VCSE organisations overcome the barriers to submitting funding bids and that these had been quite well-attended.

The Policy and Programmes Manager (Communities and VCSE) reported that equality monitoring data collected during the application process related to the recipients of the services, not those who were running the organisation, and that information on the former could be provided.  He outlined the monitoring arrangements for successful organisations to ensure that they were delivering what they had set out in their bid.

The Assistant Chief Executive reported that a “lessons learnt” exercise from this process would be carried out and that he would welcome Members’ thoughts on this, including on how to involve Ward Councillors and service users.  He advised that, if Members had concerns about any specific groups which had been awarded funding, they could raise this during the due diligence process.  In response to a question about whether some of the funding that had been allocated could be recalled and allocated to different groups, he reported that there was no appeals process in relation to the funding decisions; however, he reiterated that Members could raise concerns about specific organisations if they claimed to be doing work in their ward where this was not the case, as part of the due diligence process before the funding was confirmed.  The Policy and Programmes Manager (Communities and VCSE) requested that, if Members did have any concerns, that they raise them as soon as possible via the Our Manchester Fund email address or by emailing him directly.

The Chair outlined the process for members of the public to speak at scrutiny committee meetings.   She stated that members of the public did not have a right to speak at meetings but could do so if invited by the Chair. If members of the public had a special interest in an item on the agenda and wanted to speak, they should tell the Committee Officer, who would pass the request to the Chair. Groups of people would usually be asked to nominate a spokesperson.  Although no requests had been made in advance, on this occasion, she agreed to permit Atiha Chaudry from the Manchester BME Network to speak on behalf of the VCSE groups present and Cath Dyson to speak as a member of public, not affiliated to any of the groups.

Atiha Chaudry from the Manchester BME Network spoke on behalf of representatives from a number of VCSE sector organisations who had attended the meeting.  She reported that she had attended a meeting of the Committee in 2018 in relation to the previous round of OMVCS funding where VCSE groups had raised similar points to the ones being raised today.  She informed Members that some marginal improvements had been made since then but a lot of the same issues were still present.  She welcomed the points that the Committee Members had made.  She advised that the funds needed to be invested well, through understanding local communities, and that she was not sure that this had been done well enough.  She stated that her group had been involved in the co-design process but not the decision-making process.  She stated that she and the other attendees she was representing wanted to work in partnership with the Council to ensure the investment went to the places and people who most needed them, to reduce inequality, reduce poverty and improve lives.  She asked that the decisions be looked at again.  She reported that a lot of the funding had gone to larger organisations which had been funded for a number of years but would have been better allocated to smaller organisations.  Sheexpressed concern at the lack of funding for small BME-led organisations.  She stated that some organisations were ticking boxes on forms to say that they worked with all communities when this was not the case.  She stated that the geographic and demographic issues with the distribution of funding had not been adequately addressed.  She questioned the way the development fund was being used, as Macc were already funded to do development work.

The Assistant Chief Executive advised that it had been a very difficult process, given the level of demand for funding and the complexities involved.  He stated that the Supporting Communities Fund had been set up to support smaller, community organisations.  He informed Members about work taking place in relation to other Council and partner funding streams to look at how development funding could be used to support other organisations.

Cath Dyson, a Manchester resident, addressed the Committee in relation to the EIA at appendix one in the report.  She expressed concern that the document conflated the terms “sex” and “gender”.  She stated that, in her view, LGB (lesbian, gay and bisexual) should be categorised separately from T (trans) in the document, with the latter being under the heading “gender reassignment”.  A Member expressed concern that this was not inclusive or relevant to the report and referred to a motion previously passed by the Council in relation to trans issues.  The Chair suggested that this issue would be more relevant to the Communities of Identity report, rather than a report focusing on funding for VCSE organisations. 

The Deputy Leader reported that difficult decisions had had to be made due to the volume of applications and the amounts that had been applied for; however, she advised that she took on board the comments raised and would look into these, including improving the process for the next funding round and looking at how development funding could be used in the best way possible to support smaller organisations.  She highlighted that the list of groups which had been funded included some excellent organisations doing really good work.

The Chair thanked volunteers across the city for all their hard work and staff for providing this report.

Decision

To arrange a meeting between the Deputy Leader and Members of the Committee to discuss this further.

[Councillor Hussain declared a disclosable pecuniary interest as a Director of Muslim Writers North and left the room for this item.]