Equal NP funding for Bristol’s rich and poor

How does granting blanket funding across a city that has some of the nation’s richest and poorest wards in any way work towards reducing inequality?

The city-wide Neighbourhood Partnerships (NP) were recently reviewed and as an active member of my NP I attended one of these meetings to provide input.

My main reason for attending was to raise the issue of how money allocated to the NP is handed down by the council. I raised the question as to why all wards, regardless of population size or known differentials, are allocated the same amount of money.

Other people at this event agreed with me, they came from across the city and like me understood the need for funds to reflect the reality of our city. This was recorded to be taken forward by the officer leading the session.

How disappointing then to read the papers prepared for Cabinet last week about the recommendations from this review that declared all NP areas will continue to receive blanket funding until at least the boundary review in 2016.

Our council has six overarching corporate aims, one of which is: Reducing health and wealth inequalities.

How does granting blanket funding across a city that has some of the nation’s richest and poorest wards in any way work towards achieving this aim?

In addition, recent equalities legislation places a duty on public bodies to have “due regard” to “advance equality of opportunity” and that this “must influence the decisions reached by public bodies”. This is known as the Public Sector Duty Requirement.

I fail to see how blanket funding to NPs fulfils this duty. Indeed, in my view, blanket funding serves to maintain the very inequalities that this legislation and work elsewhere in the council seeks to remove.

As a member of Clifton, Clifton East and Cabot Neighbourhood Partnership Health and Wellbeing sub-group I received an email this week that stated that it had £33,371 left in this fund and that this was “too much funding to still have available at this stage of the year” and that we might “agree a strategy for how to achieve full spend”.

Another of those six overarching corporate aims include a commitment to maximise financial resources.

I suggest that being in a position where there is a need to come up with a strategy ‘to achieve full spend’ does not fulfil this aim.

Can I suggest that any remaining money from my NP is re-allocated to other parts of the city where applications may have been refused due to lack of funds?

I am no statistician but even I could create a formula that would better fit the ward population size differences and documented need across Bristol, that redistributes wealth in a way that better reflects the realities of the lives led by people living in this city.

Christine Townsend

BS8

Picture: Shuttershock