A pot of Liverpool Council cash handed out across the city for the benefit of communities is to be paused.
The local authority’s cabinet is expected to sign off on plans to halt spending of the Mayoral Neighbourhood Fund (MNF) for three months when it meets tomorrow morning. It has been proposed the fund is subject of a rapid review involving members elected during May’s upcoming all out elections.
MNF is a discretionary budget provided to ward councillors to support the delivery of their ward priorities. It is used to fund a wide range of activities and service provision from community clean ups, youth provision, additional rodent baiting, community greening, seasonal animation and supporting charities and organisations. Its operational delivery is managed by the council’s Streetscene service, with support from the grants and performance team, who provide administrative support and carry out due diligence on requests for grant funding.
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In April last year, a city council audit report identified the near £1m pot was lacking safeguards which could have contributed to a loss of public money. Prior to the grants and performance team being involved, a 2019 audit document said some cash awards were “not regularly or consistently accompanied by application forms or similar paperwork, nor were checks undertaken on the recipient organisations to ensure that they were legitimately constituted.”
Jacqui McKinlay, Liverpool Council chief operating officer, told a meeting of the authority’s neighbourhoods committee earlier this week the review had been planned pre-covid. Cllr Laura Robertson-Collins, a former cabinet member, said the MNF had been the difference between “scraping by” and “really enhancing our communities.”
The number of organisations that receive MNF varies from year to year. In 2021/22, 175 organisations were awarded grant funding and 27 businesses were paid for goods and service while seven different service areas of the council accessed the funding.
According to cabinet documents, the review has been prompted by the authority’s move to new wards and governance model, the impending all out elections and the development of a new neighbourhoods way of working. The papers said this created an “impetus” to look at the approach to the MNF “against a new local landscape and involving a new cohort of members.”
It added: “There is a recognised need to assess the existing programme for impact and alignment with current strategies and priorities.” Subject to cabinet approval, the MNF would be paused from April 1 to September 15.
A budget of £912,000 has been set aside for 2023/24.
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