1.         To agree the establishment of the Community Faith Buildings Support

Scheme;

2.         To authorise the Corporate Director of Development and Renewal after consultation with the Lead Member for Resources to establish and manage the Community Faith Buildings Support Scheme for 2012-15, with grant decision-making following the process to be adopted for the Grants Panel to ensure coordination of all grant moneys being awarded by the Council and to define and recruit to the post of Community Faith Buildings Programme Officer.

Action by:

CORPORATE DIRECTOR DEVELOPMENT AND RENEWAL (A. DALVI)

Service Head Planning and Building Control (O. Whalley)

Councillor Alibor Choudhury, Cabinet Member for Finance, introduced the report. He highlighted the proposals as a major achievement in enabling the Council to provide support to the large number of faith buildings in the building, many of which were considered to be in poor condition by English Heritage. He highlighted that the grants were open to all faith groups and there were categories for different sizes of projects. He also stated that the scheme would have a dedicated programme officer to support groups who wanted to bid with a Grants Panel to oversee the process.

Cllr Ohid Ahmed, Deputy Mayor, highlighted concerns that the administration costs were too high.

The Mayor considered points raised during discussion including:

·        That faith groups provided many services to the local community and these often suffered from the poor state of the buildings.

·        Questions as to where the money had been found for this initiative.

·        Whether there could be a knock-on demand for ongoing maintenance support.

·        Whether consideration of future need rather than existing locations should be prioritised.

The Mayor highlighted the large and active faith communities in the Borough and the poor conditions of many of the buildings. He stated that the Council had a duty to support them especially as they do so much good work for the community. However, he requested that officers look at ways of bringing down the administration costs of the scheme towards £150k or 7.5%.

Decisions

1.         To agree the establishment of the Community Faith Buildings Support

Scheme;

2.         To authorise the Corporate Director of Development and Renewal after consultation with the Lead Member for Resources to establish and manage the Community Faith Buildings Support Scheme for 2012-15, with grant decision-making following the process to be adopted for the Grants Panel to ensure coordination of all grant moneys being awarded by the Council and to define and recruit to the post of Community Faith Buildings Programme Officer.

Variation of Order of Business

At this juncture the Mayor informed members of the Cabinet and others present that:

·        He had received a request to take Item 7.1 (Children and Families Plan 2012-2015) as the next item.

·        He therefore agreed under the constitutional provisions of Council Procedure Rule 7.2 to vary the order of business to take that item next.

Accordingly the Mayor agreed the following:

1.      That the order of business be varied to take Item 7.1 (Children and Families Plan 2012-2015) as the next item.