Fury as council pulls cash from project to help poor
TOWN HALL CHIEFS ACCUSED OF ‘SECRECY’ OVER FUNDING FOR VOLUNTARY GROUPS
A BLAZING row has erupted over the way Manchester town hall funds voluntary organisations after it pulled cash for a 40-year-old project in one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods – and seven groups focused on ethnic minorities.
Council chiefs have been accused of ‘secrecy’ by their own finance boss in the way they have handed out more than £2.5m in cash for 2018.
Those to lose all their money include the Harpurhey Neighbourhood Project, which has been helping struggling residents in the area since the 1970s.
As a result, the organisation says it will be forced to close from April and has issued redundancy notices.
The project’s manager has declared herself ‘appalled,’ claiming the town hall has ‘written it off’ without bothering to look at its track record, while councillors and the area’s MP have also called for the decision to be reversed.
Meanwhile, seven out of 13 bodies to have their cash axed across focus specifically on black, Asian, Jewish or Irish communities.
Councillors on the town hall’s equalities committee have registered their alarm and questioned why that is the case.
Even the town hall’s finance chief has said there are ‘fundamental flaws’ in the way this year’s funding has been handed out, warning of ‘secrecy’ and ‘unfairness’ in the process.
Manchester council last year changed the way it pays out its funding for voluntary sector groups, with organisations all told to apply or re-apply to a new panel called Our Manchester in charge of one unified pot of cash.
The Harpurhey Neighbourhood Project, which was set up as part of an inner-cities programme in the 1970s, re-applied for £39,600 but for the first time was rejected outright in a blunt letter sent out in December.
Its centre provides a range of support to people living in the local community, including a drug and alcohol service and advice on benefits and getting back into work. Loss of the grant wipes out half its budget, meaning it cannot afford to pay staff.
Gayle Hindley, who runs the project, said: “I am appalled that an organisation that has served the community for 40 years can be written off without our track record being taken into account. “Our work has been monitored by the council for over 20 years and we have never been told that they were unhappy with it.
“Harpurhey is one of the poorest areas in the country and we already lag behind other wards in the city in terms of resources and now they want to take away more.” She said the decision was taken ‘without so much as a phone call,’ adding that the funding would have let her project apply for £2m in lottery cash in order to expand the centre, creating ten jobs.
“How is the city council going to provide that for less than 40 grand?” she added.
In total 13 organisations lost their funding completely in the latest round, 50 received repeat funding and 10 got cash for the first time – including ‘friends’ groups at libraries in Fallowfield and Burnage that received more than £100,000 between them, as well as Cheetham Hill Advice Centre and the homeless charities Justlife and Coffee 4 Craig.
Other organisations received considerable repeat funding, including Chorlton Good Neighbours, which got more than £150,000.
Among those that lost out, the Longsight/Moss Side Community Project – which like the Harpurhey project has been helping deprived communities since the 1970s, but in the south of the city – had its funding Gayle Hindley