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London Civic Forum calls members' meeting after GLA cuts core grant 1

Finance | Tania Mason | 11 May 2009

The survival of the London Civic Forum is hanging in the balance after the Greater London Authority withdrew its core grant once Boris Johnson became mayor.

The charity’s chair Andrew Wakefield has warned other infrastructure organisations that they are likely to face similar cuts as politicians direct limited public funds to frontline services.

The GLA does not typically fund organisations, but for the three years from 2004 to 2007 it gave the London Civic Forum £100,000 each year to carry out its work promoting civic participation in the democratic process.

Similar funding model to CVAs

This core funding included a salary for a full-time director who was tasked with finding additional funding for the Forum’s work from the National Lottery and trusts – a similar model, said Wakefield, to how local authorities fund Councils for Voluntary Action. During the period of the core GLA grant, the Forum generated, on average, four times what it received from the GLA.

During this period, the Forum’s staff numbers grew to six, delivering four programmes of work.

In November 2007, the Forum asked the GLA whether its grant would be renewed in March 2008, and was told to begin preparing a bid. In March it was told to return in April, and then a decision was postponed until after the mayoral election.

After Boris Johnson won, Wakefield wrote to the new mayor explaining that his charity had been in negotiations with the GLA over its grant. In November a meeting was secured, more information about the bid was requested and supplied, but on 23 April this year – more than a year after submitting its bid - the Forum finally received notification that its core grant would not be renewed.

Focus on frontline services

In its letter, the GLA cited “efficiency savings” and its wish to focus its funding on “frontline services such as rape crisis centres”.

Wakefield said the decision “leaves us with a hole in the finances and no director, because we haven’t got £50,000 to pay one”. He now has to take on an operational role as well as chair.

The Forum has called a members’ meeting for 22 June, where its members – which include 1,300 organisations as diverse as small local libraries to London First and several private sector and civil society bodies – will consider how to proceed. Wakefield said a piece of work was being done pro bono to explore what the future shape of the organisation, and its funding landscape, might look like.

‘Long line of dominoes’

But he is concerned that the Forum is at the beginning of a “long line of dominoes”.

“Public sector finances are in such appalling shape, if I was a politician now I’d be putting money into forntline services too, because that’s what voters want to see,” he said. “I don’t think we are a one-off – I think second-tier infrastrucutre organisations are in for a really tough two or three years.”

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