Agenda item

Report of the Chief Grants Officer.

The Committee received a report seeking to allocate up to £3.3m in 2017/18 towards a detailed grants programme to get young disabled Londoners into work and to help maintain their employment.

The programme, the suggested name for which was ‘Bridge to Work’, aimed to narrow the disability employment gap by funding projects which provided employability support for young disabled people in London and strengthen links between employers and the disabled community.

The Committee discussed the proposed allocation of £1.3m from this year’s budget, consistent with the purposes for which those funds were originally allocated by the Court of Common Council on 23 July 2015 (and carried forward to 2016/17); with the balance of funding for the programme of £2m intended to be funded from next year’s budget uplift for those same purposes. As the grants under the programme would only be awarded in 2017/18, the funds from this year’s budget could not be committed in the charity’s accounts in this financial year and would need to be carried-forward to next year’s budget. 

It was noted that authority to take these carry-forward decisions, and those relating to budget allocation in each financial year, fell outside this Committee’s terms of reference but that there was an urgency in achieving approval to both the carry-forward and the Committee’s budget allocation for 2017/18 before the May Committee meeting to allow funding decisions under the new grants programme to be taken at that meeting. The Committee also heard advice from the Comptroller and City Solicitor regarding the City of London Corporation’s duties as trustee of the charity to act in the best interests of the charity and its beneficiaries by adopting policies and procedures which support the efficient and effective governance and administration of the charity in the management of its assets and in applying the charity’s funds in furtherance of its charitable purposes. 

RESOLVED - To

a)            Agree the name of this programme as Bridge to Work;

b)            Agree the general allocation of funds to deliver the programme as outlined in Table 1, £1.3m to be funded from monies allocated to the Committee’s budget in 2016/17 and £2.0m to be funded from the next financial year’s budget allocation; and

c)            Instruct officers to bring recommendations on the specific funding to named organisations to the May 2017 Committee.