Archived decisions

Contact: Jennie Pell, External Funding Officer. Telephone: 01962 846571, email: [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 The aim of this report is to analyse the range of external funding bids submitted during the financial year, 2006 / 07. The report will include the financial data of submitted bids by department as well as detailing the various funding bodies.

2. Recommendations

a) To carry out a training and refresher session for staff involved in updating the database.

b) To develop a mechanism to capture information on bids where the County Council is a significant partner but not the main applicant.

3. Background

3.1 The External Funding Database was implemented as a way of addressing various issues surrounding external funds coming into the council so that as an organisation, we can be sure that we are doing all we can to maximise income from external sources. For the purposes of the database this is defined as follows:

Discretionary money not accounted for within the Formula Spending Share (FSS), or equivalent, distributed by various UK and EU bodies on a business case and / or competitive basis.

Before the database, there was no central collection of data on such funds.

3.2 The main benefits expected of the database were as follows

· To provide bidding data sometimes required by grant-awarding bodies e.g. What other bids have been submitted by the Council to a particular funding distributor.

· To avoid duplication and to enable bids to be coordinated or prioritised where more than one bid is being made in response to an invitation to make an application e.g. Invest to Save Budget or Lottery.

· To assess how well we do/how successful we are in our bids; to assess the extent to which the Council is making or failing to make appropriate bids

· To identify where no bids are made so that we can 'plug the gap'

· To make comparisons with previous years

· To suggest opportunities for using existing experience/knowledge and ensure cross-departmental working where appropriate

· To confirm that budget provision has been made for the Council's contributions or that budget requirements have been identified

3.3 Since the implementation of the database additional demands for the data have arisen, making accurate collection of external funding information all the more significant. The Institute of Public Finance, driven by the Audit Commission annually, since 2004, circulate an External Funding Statistics questionnaire, as a step towards developing national benchmarking information on the subject. The database is now beginning to provide the information to complete this questionnaire.

3.4 This move is reflected in the inclusion of external funding in the CPA key lines of enquiry for Use of Resources under Internal Control and Value for Money. Systematic use of the External Funding Database will enable the Council to respond positively to these lines of enquiry.

4. External Funding Data 2006-2007

4.1 This report includes projects that were approved or ongoing between 1^st April 2006 and 31^st March 2007. Although the database "tracks" projects from initial idea through to submission then approved or rejected, for the purpose of this report only the projects that have secured the relevant funding are included.

4.2 The data shown in the report is only as accurate as the data inputted into the system and this is the main concern with the database. With an authority the size of Hampshire County Council (HCC), it can be difficult to track all the bids the Authority is developing.

4.3 The database only stores information on projects where the County Council is the accountable body and therefore administers the funding through its bank account. It does not include projects where the Authority works in partnership but does not act as the accountable body.

4.4 The financial summary for Environment department includes Developer's Contributions of £7,057,909.

4.5 This is the first annual report where some comparative data from the previous year is available. As the database continues to be populated in the future then this comparative data will increase and be more robust.

4.6 The past year has seen the launch of the major Big Lottery Fund (BLF) programmes, a merger between the New Opportunities Fund and the Community Fund. Although a large range of programmes were launched under the BLF, in reality the number of programmes where local authorities were eligible was limited and even with eligible programmes, local authority applications were given low priority. As a result there was a number of unsuccessful bids to several of these programmes.

4.7 2007 saw the proposed start of the new European Union (EU) funding streams as part of the 2007 - 2013 budgets.

4.8 However, the start of many if these programmes has been delayed and as a result there have been no funds secured from this source during 2006/07.

5 Total value of External Funding 2006-2007

5.1 This report of the External Funding database covered the financial year of 2006/07.

5.2 The total value of external funding secured is £12,414,240.

5.3 While the total value of external funds is significant in itself, the total value of the projects funded gives a clearer picture of the value of external funding. Without the leverage of external funding many activities would be carried out to a much reduced degree or not at all. This is particularly true of added value activities such as recreational provision and economic development. The total project value, including Hampshire County Council and partner contributions, for projects underway and/or completed in 2006/2007 is £14,671,537.

Totals by Department - Projects underway or completed in 2006/07

	Total Secured	Number of Projects
Chief Executive's	782,895	3
County Treasurer's	1,300,000	1
Children's Services	25,000	2
Human Resources	Nil	Nil
IT Services	Nil	Nil
Environment	7,317,909	10 (6 excluding Developer's Contributions)
Property, Business and Regulatory	Nil	Nil
Recreation and Heritage	2,988,436	11
Adult Services	Nil	Nil
Total	£12,414,240	27 (23 excluding Developer's Contributions

6 Who is bidding?

6.1 The breakdown by department can be seen in the pie chart below.

6.2 The Economic Development Office within Chief Executive's continues to utilise the potential of external funding to support its work. Two of the three projects above are from this department and are funding extensions to existing projects. The third project was a joint Invest to Save project between the County Council, within the Policy Unit, and the Community and Voluntary sector. This shows how the County Council is keen to work in partnership where appropriate to deliver services. Last year Chief Executive's department secured £388,034.

6.3 Recreation and Heritage also continue to secure significant amounts of external funding to deliver their services. Last year the total project funding on the database was £374,047. This dramatic increase to 2,988,436 could partly be attributed to better reporting as a member of staff within Sports is now responsible for inputting their bids. This has ensured that any projects ongoing have been added. This was identified as a need following last year's report.

6.4 The Environment department has seen a decrease in external funding this year (excluding Developer's Contributions) to £260,000. This may be due to the fact that the Environment department has been very successful in the past at accessing EU funds and as mentioned in paragraphs 4.7 and 4.8 these funds have not been available.

6.5 This shows that both Recreation and Heritage and the Economic Development Office are two parts within the Council that regularly actively seek funding to support their work.

6.6 The availability of funds to bid for can vary year to year which can be hard to control and plan for. However the successful Invest to Save and Capacity Building programme bids show that the Authority does have the skills in place to respond to an opportunity when it arises.

6.7 There does also appear to be a link between departments and teams that manage non-statutory services and the level of bidding activity. These teams appear far more active in their funding activity.

6.8 Anecdotally, there is evidence that Adult Services are involved in bidding. Due to the changing nature of their service however, these bids are increasingly in partnership with the community and voluntary sector whereby the County Council acts as a supporting partner and therefore is not the accountable body. This is due to local government now being ineligible for certain funds. This means that such projects would not be entered on this database.

7. Where the funds come from

7.1 A breakdown of the funding secured can be seen in the pie chart below.

7.2 As mentioned in both paragraphs 4.7, 4.8 and 6.4 the major difference this year is the absence of European Funding. However, as explained in these paragraphs there is a reasonable explanation and this figure should change over the next year. Work has been carried out by the External Funding Unit to highlight EU funding opportunities and the results of this will hopefully become apparent in future reports.

7.3 Both funding from Government sources and the National Lottery has increased. The increase in Lottery funding can most likely be attributed to the accurate input of data from the Sports section as the majority of this funding is from Sport England.

7.4 Developer's contributions have also increased from 2005/06.

7.5 There has been a decrease in securing funding from Landfill Tax, Trusts and Foundations and Sponsorship in 2006/07.

8. Conclusion

8.1 There continues to be bidding activity across the County Council. As in previous years, certain departments are more pro-active in their approach to external funding. However, this can partly be attributed to the types of funding available.

8.2 There is evidence of the County Council's willingness to work in partnership where appropriate.

8.3 Due to the size and diverse nature of the County Council departments it is very hard to ensure that all projects are entered onto the External Funding Database. Department re-organisations and staff changes can also affect the level of consistency of data input across the departments.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes:

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

(Quote list of documents here: either "none" if 1 or 2 above apply; or list the relevant letters, memos, etc. and their location)