Decision details

Public Health has approved entering into a grant agreement with Leeds
Community Foundation for the purpose of administering the annual
Lunch Cub Grant scheme of £185,000 for older people, to commence
from 01st April 2016 for a period of 12 months.
Other options for managing the Lunch Club Grant were explored and
these were to either transfer the grant to Community Committees or a
third sector organisation. The option to transfer the grant to Community
Committees was discounted as the best value option was found to be to
transfer the management of the grant to Leeds Community Foundation.
The reason being there is no capacity within the local area teams which
support Community Committees to support the application process,
administer and monitor the grant or provide infrastructure guidance and
support to successful clubs. Additional resource could be paid for from
the grant fund but this would significantly reduce the funding available to
groups as no additional funding is available for administration costs.
Lunch clubs function on a local and/or city wide basis according to the
geographic distribution of their community, for example, the Sikh Elders
lunch club which attracts members from all over Leeds. The current
grant structure follows this distribution pattern. Any future administration
for the Community Committees would need to incorporate a central
element to cover these city wide rather than area based clubs. It would
prove difficult to distribute the fund into Community Committee areas and
at the same time reflect this demand.
The option to transfer the grant to a third sector organisation, namely,
Leeds Community Foundation (LCF), was found to be the best value
option for the following reasons:
•Efficiency savings achieved within the council in respect of officer time
saved in regards to managing the fund.
•LCF’s main purpose is the distribution of grant funds to local
organisations and they already manage a number of small grant
programmes on behalf of the Council so have a strong track record in
this area.
•LCF will not charge a fee for administering the grant fund and will cover
the costs of this through their own funds so the proposal provides
excellent value for money.
•It makes full use of existing capacity and expertise within experienced
community/ voluntary organisations as Leeds Community Foundation
has the resources and expertise to build relationships with groups and
work with them to access further support or funding.