Agenda item

            The Committee considered the undernoted report:

 

“Relevant Background Information

 

      Attached (Appendix 1) is a letter received on 20 December 2007 regarding the transfer of Community Festivals Funding to Local Authorities.  This funding was previously administered through the Northern Ireland Events Company on behalf of the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL).

 

      The letter indicates a transfer of funds totalling £450,000 to Local Authorities for funding of Community Festivals in local authority areas. It is indicated that under the proposed mechanism for distribution of funds Belfast will receive £77,300 which is 17.17% of the fund.

 

      The Council has in the past considered proposals to develop the potential of Belfast as a City of Festivals. A Festival Policy was adopted by Council in October 2004 and options for a specific festivals fund have been explored.

 

      Belfast as Northern Ireland's creative and cultural hub has a larger number of festivals based events than other parts of Northern Ireland. This includes a large number of ethnic festival and other community festivals which draw from a catchment area for audiences and participants from well beyond the local authority boundaries. This has been reflected in the allocation of funds administered under the Community Festivals Fund in previous years by the Northern Ireland Events Company who had allocated approximately 50% of the total fund within the Belfast Local Authority area.

 

Key Issues

 

      There are several issues which are of concern regarding the proposed distribution of funds:

 

1.   There is no proposed transfer of funds to local authorities for staffing resources to support the distribution of funding. The total resources allocated to the Northern Ireland Event s Company for the fund in 2006/7 was £550,000 which included administrative costs of £100,000 and covered the employment of a Manager and two Community Festivals Officers.

 

2.   Members will be aware that in order to ensure funding is in place for April 2008 funding schemes would normally be advertised in October/November 2007. Full details and a Letter of Offer on the transfer of funding has not yet been received. There is therefore unlikely to be adequate time to ensure funding applications can be assessed, processed and made available by April 2008.

 

3.   It is a condition of the monies that Local Authorities will be required to contribute match funding to support community festivals. If the full level of match funding is not made DCAL will retain any surplus funds. It has, however been indicated that, in the first instance, Culture and Arts/ Good Relations funding administered under existing criteria would be eligible as match funds. There may, however, be a requirement to source additional fund for the scheme from Council sources.

 

4.   It is anticipated that there will be considerable demand for the Community Festival Fund within the Belfast area. Belfast has over 50 cultural festivals including regional events plus additional sporting festivals.  The allocation of £77,300 to Belfast is considerably less than the awards made through the NIEC within the Belfast area in previous year.  (In 2007/08, of the £293k administered in Community Festivals Fund, grants over £146k (50%) were in Belfast). The funds proposed may prove inadequate to administer the fund and meet the anticipated demand for funding.

 

5.   Further to this funding DCAL has also made available transitional funding for a number of community festivals in the Belfast area. In 2006/07 this totalled an additional £145k.  In 2007/08 a further £50k was allocated.  There is, as yet, no indication that any arrangements are in place to do this in the coming financial year. This will have implications for the viability of several community festivals.

 

      It is clear that the funding level proposed falls short of the resources provided to Belfast under previous arrangements. The funds proposed may prove inadequate to administer the fund and meet the anticipated demand for funding.

 

      Internal challenges

 

      The allocation of the funding would present several administrative challenges for Belfast City Council:

 

1.   Centralised Festivals Fund

 

      Good Relations, Culture and Arts and Community Services have all grant administration responsibility within areas relating to Community Festivals. In addition, the Events section has taken a lead on the St Patrick’s Day main event and in discussions with Orangefest. 

 

      The possibility of a centralised Festivals Fund has been discussed in the past as part of Festival Policy development however, this was left unresolved after cross party briefings on the issue.

 

2.   Financial Resources

 

      In addition to the issues outlined above, match funding will be required for the Community Festivals Fund. At present DCAL has yet to finalise the full administrative process. It has, however been indicated that in the first instance Culture and Arts/ Good Relations funding administered under existing criteria would be eligible as match funds. There may, however, still remain a requirement to source additional funding for the scheme from Council sources.

 

3.   Staffing Resources

 

      Staffing resources will be required to administer the fund. In excess of 25 and potentially up to 50 applications are likely to be received and will require assessment. Successful applicants will require administration, monitoring and evaluation. It is unclear how the resources are to be allocated – there is likely to be a regular draw down of funds but it is not yet detailed what level of reporting /feed back to DCAL/NILGA will be necessary. The Local Government Auditor will be required to review processes.

 

4.   Timescale to administer funds

 

      Various timeframes are possible depending on when Council receives final approval to go forward with a grant scheme. It is not possible to follow current Council procedure and have funding available by April 2008, although alternatives such as through a delegated authority may allow for a more rapid turn around of grants. The requirement for an appeals process is also indicated in the guidance from DCAL which may further delay availability of grants.

 

      Immediate approval for officers to develop and advertise a grant scheme, from which recommendations would then be brought back for approval would allow funding to be available in June at the earliest, however, Members may wish to review and agree the criteria for such a fund at a future Committee, this would result in funding not being available until July at the earliest.

 

Resource Implications

 

      Financial

 

      Resources of £77,300 will be required to provide match funding for the Community Festivals Fund some of which may be provided through existing funding.

 

      Human Resources

 

      There are implications for additional staffing resources required to administer any proposed fund.

 

Recommendations

 

      It is recommended that a response to the letter from DCAL regarding the proposed transfer of funding is made indicating that the allocation to Belfast as outlined is inadequate given the previous percentage of allocation of funds in the Belfast area. 

 

      It is further recommended that the response should highlight issues relating to the resources for administration and the short timescale and seek clarification on other transitional funding that may be available from Government sources.

 

Documents Attached

 

      Appendix 1 – Letter received from DCAL 20 December regarding the proposed transfer of Community Festivals Fund to Local Authorities.

 

Key to Abbreviations

 

DCAL    -   Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure

NILGA  -   Northern Ireland Local Government Association.

 

APPENDIX 1

 

      You may be aware that Edwin Poots, Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure made a statement today in the Northern Ireland Assembly about his plans to transfer funds to the 26 Local Authorities to administer community festivals from 1 April 2008.

 

      By way of background I would explain that the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure has policy responsibility for the Community Festivals Fund and currently awards to festival organisations are made by the Northern Ireland Events Company through an open application process.  The current Community Festivals Fund budget for distribution to festivals is £450,000.

 

      Under the Review of Public Administration, the work of the Northern Ireland Events Company was to transfer to the Northern Ireland Tourist Board on 1 April 2008.  As community festivals do not fit readily with NITB’s tourism development remit the Minister agreed that the Community Festivals Fund will not transfer to NITB.

 

      It was envisaged that the Community Festivals Fund would transfer to Local Government under the Review of Public Administration and this remains the position in Arlene Foster’s paper on The Emerging Findings and Next Steps.  There is a clear rationale for community festivals to transfer to Local Government as they play an important role in promoting social cohesion at community level.

 

      With the agreement of the Northern Ireland Executive, the Department will now proceed to transfer funds to the 26 Local Authorities to administer community festivals from 1 April 2008.  No Transfer of Functions legislation is required as Local Authorities already have statutory powers to fund local events and some Councils are already involved in funding festivals.

 

      The proposed mechanism for transfer of funds is through a Specific Grant along similar lines to that currently operated by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister to award grant to District Councils for their community relations programmes.  DCAL will retain overall policy responsibility and Councils will be asked to take account of the Department’s Policy and Guidance Framework on community festivals, a copy of which is enclosed.  Councils will have considerable flexibility to develop their own application processes and funding criteria consistent with the ethos of devolving decisions to local level.  Also, it will be entirely for Councils to decide which festivals should be funded and to what extent.

 

      The Minister has decided that the budget for community festivals should be distributed among the 26 Local Authorities on the basis of population distribution, with a 10% weighting applied for deprivation as measured by the Noble Multiple Deprivation Measure.  The proposed allocation to each Council on this basis is set out in the attached table.  I would wish to make it clear that these are indicative allocations at this stage and will not be finalised until the draft budget has been approved by the Assembly early in the New Year.

 

      You will also wish to note that the Minister proposes to make it a condition of grant award that each Council should provide match funding to support community festivals.  If any Council decides that it does not wish to support community festivals to this extent, any surplus above the level of match funding provided will be retained by the Department and will be available for distribution to other Councils.

 

      We would expect to issue the detailed Letters of Offer to each Council in the New Year after the budget has been approved.  However I hope this letter gives you sufficient advance notification so that you can plan ahead and have procedures in place to administer funding to community festivals from 1 April 2008.

 

      I will be liaising with NILGA on the detailed arrangements for this transfer but should you have any queries in the meantime I would of course be happy to discuss these with you.

 

      The Department is also writing to festival organisations to advise them of the new arrangements.

 

PROPOSED ALLOCATION TO DISTRICT COUNCILS

BASED ON POPULATION (90%) AND DEPRIVATION (10%)

 

District Council	Proposed Allocation   £	%
Antrim	12,300	2.73
Ards	18,000	4.00
Armagh	13,700	3.04
Ballymena	15,600	3.47
Ballymoney	6,800	1.51
Banbridge	10,600	2.36
Belfast	77,300	17.17
Carrickfergus	9,700	2.16
Castlereagh	15,800	3.51
Coleraine	14,200	3.15
Cookstown	8,500	1.89
Craigavon	22,600	5.02
Derry	31,200	6.93
Down	16,500	3.67
Dungannon	12,800	2.84
Fermanagh	15,000	3.33
Larne	8,000	1.78
Limavady	8,900	1.98
Lisburn	28,400	6.31
Magherafelt	9,900	2.20
Moyle	4,400	0.98
Newry and Mourne	25,400	5.64
Newtownabbey	20,400	4.53
North Down	18,600	4.13
Omagh	13,100	2.91
Strabane	12,400	2.75
	£450,000	100.00”

 

            The Director drew the Committee’s attention to various aspects of the report and indicated that, since the Council provided grants to community organisations through the Culture and Arts Unit and the Good Relations Section, it might be advantageous for the Council to consider establishing a centralised Community Festivals Fund so that organisations would have to apply to only one Department within the Council for financial assistance towards such festivals.

 

            After further discussion, the Committee agreed that:

 

(i)      the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure be advised that, given the funding allocated previously to community festivals in the Belfast area, the Council considers the amount being allocated to the City under the Community Festivals Fund to be inadequate;

 

(ii)     the response should highlight issues relating to the administrative resources required for the management of the Fund, the length of time available to introduce the Scheme and seek clarification regarding the possibility of funding being obtained from other Government sources which could be used to enhance the Community Festivals Fund;

 

(iii)    the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure be requested to liaise directly with the Local Authorities in Northern Ireland, rather than the Northern Ireland Local Government Association, as indicated in its letter; and

 

(iv)    letters be issued to the Local Authorities in Northern Ireland advising them of the Council’s response to the letter from the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure.