Wrexham Council ‘seriously considering not taking grants anymore’

The leader of Wrexham Council has warned that the local authority is “seriously considering not taking grants” if they are not sustainable.

Speaking to Wrexham.com earlier this week, Cllr Mark Pritchard was commenting on the year to year budget process and called for a three year settlement period instead in a bid to provide more stability.

Currently the annual settlement is announced by the Welsh Government in the autumn, following details flowing across from Westminster. However there are concerns this year that this could be as late as December this year.

“We can’t continue to work on an annual settlement that we don’t know what’s going to come, and then it comes last minute in October,” said Cllr Pritchard.

“Even then we don’t know really until after Christmas what we’re actually going to have allocated so I think that needs to be revisited.”

Cllr Pritchard went on to discuss grant funding, and firmly stating that Wrexham Council could rule themselves out of grants that expire or do not cover ongoing revenue requirements.

He explained: “We are seriously considering not taking grants anymore, because they’re not sustainable grants, they give us a one off grant to run a service and then two years later, it stops. Then we have to pick up the bill.

“We just don’t haven’t got the money. There’s no money left or slack in the system to do this.

“You might be sitting there and thinking if the Welsh Government’s going to offer you £400,000 you’d be foolish not to take it. But what happens after two years or 12 years, or whatever the grant timescale is, then it shuts down and we have to pick it up?

“That’s the dilemma. You can’t run a country on grants, we’ve been saying that for years. Once you take money off somebody and set up something to run for 12 months, knowing that in 12 months, you haven’t got any money to continue that service. I think that’s not sustainable.”

The message is a blunter version of a previously trailed policy in the wake of the Sprouts nursery debacle and subsequent discussions about large grants funding operations or startups, without guaranteed ongoing revenue funding.