The Mar-jury is still out…

September 4, 2009 — simonashall

Last night, Conservatives gave a second chance to the Marjorie Richardson Centre by funding it another £10,000 and accepting the excellent business plan that the centre had put together. Mary Painter, a Horseller and Lib Dem activist was very instrumental in that and she deserves praise for the document she helped produce.

Unfortunately, the decision hasn’t stopped sanctimonious sour grapes from Cllr Denzil Coulson, who is trying to claim credit for the Lib Dems for”saving” the centre. Rubbish.

“It is most unfair that community services such as the Marjorie Richardson
Centre have to pay the price for Tory financial mismanagement of the Council to
“plug the £1 million + hole” in council finances.”

he says. That would be the financial black hole that first emerged under the Lib Dems in 2006 /7, then, wouldn’t it? And the one that has been excerbated not by mismanagement but by a lack of funding from government and the effects of the recession?

“Residents and community organisations have already started paying
the price of Tory cuts being applied to fill their financial hole in the council
accounts.”

he continues. Wrong – the finances will be balanced in 2010/11 without recourse to any cuts in front-line services. The community organisations are not services run by the council and don’t receive continuous funding from WBC in most cases. Rejected applications happen every single year and the organisations should be quite capable of finding funds elsewhere – these are not cuts, they are simply a decision not to give a discretionary contribution.

To paint them as cuts is a typical distortion of the truth from the Lib Dems. Although the Lib Dem ranks contain people who are financial professionals, they are clearly choosing to ignore the basic business facts behind the MRC issue.

1) The centre was spending more on management costs than it was earning in sales
2) The centre was relying on Woking Borough Council solely to plug that gap
3) There was no proper business plan in place
4) The number of users is small and declining

Mary Painter and others have produced a good business plan seeking to address all the points above. I have given her credit for that – maybe the LDs would be gracious enough to give the Conservative Executive credit for keeping faith in the centre against the odds listed above.

No? I thought not.

Posted in Community, Lib Dem lies, Woking Borough Council, lib dems. Tags: , , , , . No Comments »

Marjorie Richardson dilemma

August 28, 2009 — simonashall

The News and Mail leads this week with a “fears are growing for the…” story on the Marjorie Richardson centre, which has understandably caused alarm. There is a paper on this going to the executive on September 3 that asks members to consider whether to re-instate funding to the centre on the basis of its current grant, £15,285 rather than the £20,000 it wanted.

There are, it has to be said, a couple of things that the story omitted, which is understandable because the newspaper needs to focus on the people rather than the background.

At Horsell Village Hall, we don’t rely on the council for funding, although it’s nice when it comes along. We have to do our own fundraising, balance our lettings books and seek grant funding from elsewhere. There is nothing preventing the centre from doing the same thing, so by turning down funding, the council is not “closing” the centre, it is merely saying that it cannot provide the funds it has done in the past.

The centre has now submitted a business plan – and not before time. Any operating model that relied so heavily on one source of income (WBC) is clearly in need of review. The plan shows that the centre is making £20k a year on sales as well as a £15k WBC grant but is spending more than £25k on management! This I would suggest, not WBC’s meanness, is the real problem – it’s a pity no-one at the News and Mail bothered to look it up.

In addition, the story tells us that 45-55 people each day use the centre – which is slightly at odds with the 433 a week in the grant application. However, if we multiply 50 by 5 and then 52 to get a rough yearly figure, it’s around 13,000. This seems to imply that with 15,500 visits for the year in 2007/8 (not people using the centre as the newspaper implies), we have roughly the same 50 people using the centre each day with a few extra here and there.

£20k, or for that matter £15k, is quite a bit of money to spend on – let’s be generous – 150-odd active individuals out of 92,000 residents in Woking. No-one likes to see the axe fall anywhere and taking funding away from community groups is not what Conservatism is about. But if you think that Horsell Village Hall received £3,500 for its 2,000 individual users, it does seem to introduce some perspective here.

My understanding is that the Marjorie Richardson Centre could be given time to make the new arrangements – ie a proper rather than pie-in-the-sky business plan – work. But users and staff blaming the council for the state it’s in, aiding by some unquestioning journalism, doesn’t paint it in the most favourable light.

Posted in Community, Woking Borough Council, Woking News and Mail, news. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »
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