SOCIAL RETURN

Question

I have a PC who makes significant grants to two local "service charities".  While I have often questioned whether these grants represent VFM I have usually met the Councillors proverbial "we decide" brick wall.  Now one of the charities is having bit of a moan that they are being subjected to greater scrutiny than the other charity and have suggested both work out their respective "social return" value . My limited research has revealed something called SROI "social return on investment " and wonder if any of our contributors has any experience of this discipline and whether it is relevant to PCs and possibly Cllrs fiduciary duty

Answer 1

There are countless means by which to measure social impact, many of which will provide significantly different results from the same data. For a Parish Council giving grants to local charities, the requirements are specified in the legislation, albeit in a somewhat vague and intangible definition.

If you are using Section 137, the expenditure must, in the opinion of the members of the council, be in the interests of, and bring direct benefit to, their area or any part of it or all or some of its inhabitants and the direct benefit accruing to their area or any part of it or to all or some of the inhabitants of their area will be commensurate with the expenditure to be incurred. So the nature of a direct benefit, how many inhabitants should receive it and the meaning of commensurate are undefined, and none of this needs to be based upon tangible measure, as only the opinion of the council is required.

The General Power of Competence, as I understand it, (it is not something with which I am familiar) places fewer limitations on charitable expenditure.

Comments

The  more I learn about Parish Councils the more disillusioned I become. Councillors can spend as much money as they alone choose on whatever projects they choose without any requirement to justify anything.

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Openspaces, that should not be the case.  Councils are required to publish a budget before the start of the year and work to that budget during the year.  If they have the General Power of Competence, they can act in the same way that a sane person would act i.e, they could support a local event or project.  However, they still have to work within the confines of the budget and all decisions have to be made in council meetings.

That's in an ideal world and how it should work - where the council works for the benefit of the residents, spending the public purse.  If it is not happening, a chat with your Monitoring Officer might be in order.

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In practice " the  budget" consists of a year round budget plus a generous contingency budget plus earmarked reserves where often underspends are parked under various spurious headings all of which can be vired between one another so I remain confident that should Cllrs decide on a certain course of action the cost is often not a problem. Then of  course you have the next precept which is set by the Council itself and not challengeable . Councillors in my opinion operate in a near perfect world with being able  to set their own revenue stream up to their required spend. Then they are able to operate in an environment which has a toothless code of conduct . Not all PCs of course operate in such a frivolous way but if they wanted to they certainly have few checks or balances .  As has been said before the only real remedy residents have is  through the ballot box and then you cant change a culture.  The theory that the Localism Act provided some sort of ability to hold PCs to account is IMHO hogwash. Incidentally regarding the Charity issue the MO says it is out with of his remit as it involves actions as trustees not Councillors. Meanwhile the CC doesn't have the resource to investigate !!