London Councils have voted for a boost to the pan-London grants budget, after plans announced last year to dramatically cut the scheme drew opposition and prompted a judicial review.

The grants scheme will be increased from a planned £17.7m to £20.8m, following a vote by representatives from the London boroughs, it was announced today. The effective increase to the grants pot, however, will be less – £1.1m – due to the costs involved in a High Court judicial review of London Councils’ previous consultation on the scheme and re-categorising certain commissions either for funding or to lose funding.

London Councils drew criticism, particularly from Unite the Union, when a review into the London Councils Grant Scheme late last year considered the prospect of dissolving the scheme and re-allocating the money, then totalling £28m, to councils themselves to distribute among projects and organisations.

As a result of this recent review, 62 new commissions will be funded and 23 projects currently receiving funding will stop getting money from the scheme.

Chair of London Councils, Mayor Jules Pipe said that the organisations affected by the change will be given three months notice.

“Overall, London’s boroughs provide more than £1bn support to the voluntary sector annually and London Councils’ grants programme is a small but significant part of this. Deciding its future has been just one of the many tough decisions that London’s 33 local authorities are consistently being forced to make in these times of straitened budgets,” he said.  

Welfare rights advice charity Lasa, which has had three out of four of its programmes funded by the grants scheme continued, welcomed the news.

However, Lasa chief executive Terry Stokes remained wary of what the future might hold for organisations such as his; “More generally, we are concerned that the expertise of experience welfare rights workers will be lost because of cuts to social welfare advice organisations,” he said.