# London funding changes could spell end for hundreds of voluntary sector projects

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2010/11/11/london-funding-changes-could-spell-end-hundreds-voluntary-sector-projects/
- Published: 2010-11-11T09:22:22+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**Unite, the largest union in the country, has warned that plans to give individual
London boroughs control of a large tranche of funding for the voluntary sector could
see hundreds of projects axed.**

It believes that proposals for the London Councils’ Grants Committee (LCGC) to transfer
a significant proportion of their funding to individual councils will see projects
closed down, because there will be no ring-fencing of the money.

Doug Nicholls, Unite’s National Officer for the Nor for Profit sector, which has
20,000 voluntary sector members in the capital, said: “Plans by the LCGC will let
Londoners down and be another nail in the coffin of a strategic shared approach 
to solving some of the capital’s most entrenched social problems.

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“A worst case proposal” he added, “could see funding for 400 projects end on 31 
March next year and future funds disappearing into the overall councils’ budgets
with no ring fencing or guarantee that it would go to the voluntary sector to support
the most disadvantaged.”

Unite is therefore urging all London councils to retain a London-wide funding scheme
for a range of vital services provided by voluntary sector organisations.

Currently, London councils invest £28 million a year in voluntary organisations 
on behalf of all the London councils. They fund more than 400 organisations, with
individual grants ranging from between £5,000 and £500,000.

This council’s funding is provided by the London Boroughs Grants Scheme, which was
operated since 1985. It is funded and governed by all 32 London boroughs and the
Corporation of London.

It enables London’s local authorities to fund voluntary organisations working in
more than one borough, sub-regionally or across the capital to meet the needs of
London as a whole.

Nicholls commented: “With the Comprehensive Spending Review having created a hole
of about £1.5 billion for local authorities, you can see they will be tempted to
claim back any penny from anywhere. But this will only lead to the further fragmentation
of essential services in London. It will not be cost effective.”

www.unitetheunion.com

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