AS chairman of Bury East Area Board and, until recently, chairman of the East Bury Initiative, I felt that I had to respond to the inaccuracies and issues raised by Ms Ivanoff's letter headed "Bury East: suffering and isolated" (June 29).
The overwhelming drive and focus of both the East Bury Initiative and the Area Board is involving local people in the regeneration and future development of their communities by becoming a part of the decision-making process. Many people have taken up this opportunity by attending public meetings, serving as co-opted members of the Area Board and steering groups, and of course, developing local projects and bidding for funds to enable them to make real differences.
It would appear from Ms Ivanoff letter that she has confused some of the funding which is available for voluntary and community groups in Bury East. She refers in her letter to two applications made to the same fund which was not the case. Fernhill TRA made an application to the Area Board Kickstart fund and Bury Community Enterprise, whom she represents, made a bid to the SRB5 Community Development Fund. Ms Ivanoff also suggests that both bids were turned down by "the same body of elected members from the area board" and again this is incorrect.
In terms of Kickstart bids, whilst it is true that by law only elected members can vote on the allocation of council funds, these bids are assessed by a panel of local people whose ratio to elected members is three to one. The panel makes a recommendation to the Area Board and this is then voted upon by elected members. To date, at Bury East Area Board, every recommendation made by the panel has been supported by elected members.
In terms of the Community Development Fund, the Area Board has no say whatsoever in the allocation of grants. Applications to this fund are assessed and allocated by a panel made up of the chairmen of the four theme groups of the East Bury Initiative. As such this application was assessed by representatives of the health authority, the Environment Forum, the voluntary sector and housing services.
Both these applications were not simply "turned down" but the applicants were advised to either provide additional information or re-submit the application to a more appropriate fund. For whatever reason this advice was not followed and neither bid was re-submitted.
Ms Ivanoff states that "local councillors and their employees, whose job it is to support local community groups, simply do not care about people's needs". But this could not be further from the truth.
In fact local councillors, their employees and the members of the community who give up their time to be part of the decision-making process have a duty to ensure that funds are allocated in an open and even-handed manner. Our role must therefore be to continue to closely examine all applications and reject any which are inappropriate or incomplete.
It should be remembered that the very reason this money has been made available is to assist local groups in developing their community. As such we will continue to redirect and advise unsuccessful applicants to ensure that realistic and sustainable projects are developed which can make a real difference to the quality of life in East Bury.
COUNCILLOR TREVOR HOLT,
chairman,
Bury East Area Board.
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