Decision details

Approval of Annual External Grant Receipts

Decision status: Recommendations Approved

Is Key decision?: Yes

Purpose:

The report seeks approval from the Cabinet Member for those grants offers within each portfolio that are annually recurrent.

Decision:

(i) To approve acceptance of the grant offers detailed in the report and set out in appendices 1 to 3 to the report;

 

(ii)  to approve that the Council will act as the Accountable Body in respect of the grant offers which are detailed in the report and set out in appendices 1 to 3 to the report; and

 

(iii) to approve that the Executive Directors of the Place, Resources, and People Services Portfolios, in respect of the grant offers, set out in appendices 1 to 3 of the report, made in connection with their Portfolio, in consultation with the Director of Legal and Governance and the Director of Finance and Commercial Services, authorise the completion of the funding agreements.

Reasons for the decision:

The reason why collective approval of grants is the most beneficial option  is summarised as follows:

 

·         Based on the experience gained from the management of the grants identified in the report there have been little or no material variations year on year in the purpose, terms and conditions and risks associated with these grants.

 

·         The benefits of collective approval of these grant allocations, as demonstrated in 2016/17, will mean significant savings in terms of time and workload for Service Managers who will not have to produce individual reports to approve each grant and will be able to focus the time saved on frontline service delivery.

 

·         Executive Directors and Directors will have significantly less reports to review and sign off and will be able to focus on higher Portfolio priorities with the time saved. 

 

Alternative options considered:

The following approval of grants options were considered:

 

(i) Continue with the collective grant approvals process started last year which will save time for both individual Service Managers and Executive Directors as outlined previously in the report.

 

(ii) Return to an individual grant approval process whereby each grant identified in this report would require its own individual report produced by individual Service Managers with individual sign off at the appropriate level. This will be more time consuming and will reduce the time that Service Managers can spend on frontline service delivery.

 

Given the efficiencies observed, option 1 is the preferred approval process.

 

Publication date: 19/07/2017

Date of decision: 19/07/2017

Effective from: 26/07/2017

Accompanying Documents: