Community groups face delay in decisions on Community Grants Fund applications

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Community organisation who undertook a lot of work in preparing applications to fund their activities face a frustrating delay in hearing whether they have been successful as a result of staffing issues and the volume of applications.

The Community Grants Fund is the new name  for the Neighbourhood Community Infrastructure Levy which is derived from payments made be developers.

Councillors were told by Brent Council that they had received 146 applications in total for the Community Grants Fund which is a 100% increase when compared to the last standard NCIL round in 2021.

 

The initial due diligence checks by the grants team have been completed.  However, due to capacity within the Brent Council team and the volume of applications received there will be delays in completing the initial project assessments.  

 

As a result, the Council will not be able to meet the scheduled internal department review dates and the Brent Connect panel dates that were scheduled to be held in February and March. 

 

This means that the team are still at the 12-18 weeks stage of the process shown in the above table.

 

Officers are continuing to work through the initial project assessments and have informed all applicants of the delay.

 

Councillors will be provided with a with a further update on the timeline before the end of January 2024.  In the meantime, all the meetings scheduled will be removed from your calendars.