Behind-the-door-itis
 

I have just come across a report of the handouts made in the northwest by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Divided by local authorities, it makes gloomy reading. Apparently a total of £327.5 Million has been handed out in the region for arts and community projects.

Blackburn with Darwen has received £5,148,010
Blackpool has received £5,912,408
Burnley has received £3,602,365

Even the sleepy and mainly rural Ribble Valley has received £366,148

(You just know what the next sentence is going to say, don't you?)


£245,500 of which was spent on Haworth Art Gallery in 2001. The remainder was spent producing a "plan" for Rhyddings Park, again in 2001.

In 2001 The House of Commons Library estimated that, on average, each parliamentary constituency had spent, thus far, £50 million on National Lottery tickets.

We are missing out here folks, BIG TIME! We are around six million quid behind our neighbours. No wonder the borough is in the sorry and shocking state that we complain of daily. We are afflicted with a council which has a pretty terminal case of Behind-the-door-when-it-comes-to-free-money-itis.

Our parks are falling to pieces, the Heritage Lottery Fund has the money to restore them, but HBC are too stupid and idle to ask for it.

Our Community Wardens are about to loose their jobs because HBC prefer to waste council tax on schemes the Heritage Lottery Fund could be persuaded to fork out for.

Arts and community projects in the borough are starved of cash, which any other borough seems to have no problem in securing from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

"30 years of service to the community". 30 years which have seen the borough slide ever further into debt and deprivation.

There comes a time when even the most determined soul has to admit that they are flogging a dead horse and that it is time to give up and try something new.

It strikes me, that time has come!

It is time we sacked the lot of them and threw in our lot with Blackburn.

The report is here: http://www.hlf.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/1...148/HLF_NW.pdf

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Right time to march to the town hall and blouter some sense into them. Gayle has many times pointed out what we could get wether through HBC and independently and nowt happens. Bet most of the cash was independently aquired.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

As I've pointed out before A-B - you can't blame the lottery itself. You have to apply for grants from them in order to get the cash

http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/s...hlight=lottery

So, either our Council is not applying for grants (or not encouraging local community groups to apply for grants) or the grant application forms are not up to scratch!

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Since we suspect that the Idiot-in-Chief and his cohorts inspect this site, if only to check on what is being said about them, here is an opportunity to tell them what schemes and projects you think they should be applying for lottery funding for.

To start what I am sure will be an enormous list, I'll chuck my two-pennorth in first.

A. Purchase Cannon Street Baptist Church and Lar-de-Dars and the Berkely and then connect all the properties on that block with the library and the mechanics institute into a museum/arts/education and performance district.

B. For God's sake do something about the Church Commercial and the Hargreaves Warehouse.

C. Pay a respected Architect to redesign the Town Centre. Accrington Borough Council could do it in 1947, there is no reason that HBC cannot do it now.

and finally....Get off your fat, overpaid arses and do something!!!!!


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Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Other borough councils have a funding officer or funder finder they're sometimes called. I've not actually heard of Hyndburn having one, so doubt that they do (I could be wrong so I'll need to check). If they don't then it's clearly something that they need.

The problem with the funding application forms is that they are usually very lengthy and quite complex - they also need to be written in 'application speak' to get anywhere. Quite simply they can put a lot of people off!

Also, Councils aren't usually allowed to apply for lottery funding or other streams of funding but the way to get round it is to form small groups i.e. Friends of groups, or to put certain areas of Council responsibility out to Trusts.

The thing with all these things is that you need to be really pro-active and quite visionary about it and I think that's what we're lacking around here.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Milnshaw Park, Gatty Park in fact all parks in the borough could do with a face lift & things for the kids to play on. With wardens to make sure the idiot minority dont wreck em

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

well it seem's you people no what has to be done ,anyway who are these councilors who elects them why are'nt they working for the people ???does the community not have a say in the way funds are to be spent ...or do these so called councilors have so much contempt for you they dont even consult the community...i would chose to build play parks for kids over an art gallery anyday !!!

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

The daft thing is the poorer the area the more people spend on lottery tickets.

It's socialism for the new millenium, the redisribution of wealth, except it's going from the rich to the poor.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Errrm, forgive the observation, but shouldn't that be the other way round?

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

You're quite right.

As you know I never make mistakes.

I must have mean't morally rich and poor.:)

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

I'm sure that must have been it dear.

Anyway, this is about a list of projects which members think need funding not about one of G's blonde moments.

So lets have some ideas please!

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

The other way to go about it is to look at the lottery website and see what the funding programmes are offering at the moment.

http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/programmes/

That way you can see if any of your ideas fit in with what's on offer. For instance the play ground thing.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Gayle going to have a nosey just to see if HBC need a boot were it hurts for being well to be blunt "a lazy bunch of so and so's."

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

A big public work of art in a prominent position in the Borough to bring in tourists, and put us on the map.

What?

We've already rejected that one?

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Ok had a quick nosey and was shocked at the amount of money that is available for all kinds of projects. All need to get together and push for as much as they can. :eek:

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Before we all get too excited about the amounts of money there is available, consider this. Not too many years ago HBC decided that we should celebrate the gift of the rock gardens in Oak Hill Park. The stream that is supposed to run through them from top to bottom has never been much more than a damp stain and a couple of sludgy puddles for as long as I can remember it.

So HBC decided to chuck an astonishing amount of money at it to get it all spruced up and looking bonny. I think the figure was in the region of £30,000, though I could be wrong. Go and have a look at it today; broken paths, patchy planting, overgrown with weeds, the pond at the bottom was planted with a species of reed which have been allowed to run riot and now clog it completely. And the stream...still a damp stain and a couple of sludgy puddles.

You see, HBC are very good at spending lots of money to "improve" things. But they are not too hot at finding the funding for maintenance. Loads of cash for short term cosmetics but nothing for the day to day bills that keep places of interest ticking over. This is the main reason why the parks are in such a state.

So any money that comes from the lottery to improve public parks had better have with it a fairly substantial ring-fenced maintenance grant, or in twelve months there will be little to show for the hard work and money spent.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

I have been in Oak Hill park this afternoon. I did not notice your damp stain but I did see a very nice and fairly large kiddies play area.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Actually A-B you have found a pretty major flaw with most of this type of funding - sustainability. There are a number of really good initiatives about at the moment, one of which has funding from the Arts Council, but only until 2008. It's also what happened with the Community Wardens - it's relatively easy to get the money but you have to ensure that it's maintained.

However, having said that - careful management of funds and the right applications can ensure that it's possible to continually source new money to continue developing (and at the same time maintaining) things.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Neil: Did you notice that it was built on that part of the park where they used to have greenhouses to grow their own plants? Have they got around to turfing it over yet or is it still bare earth? Also did you notice whether there has been any attempt to clear and replace the burnt out Bandstand? Or is it still fenced off?

Gayle: Until the start of the seventies all the parks were well maintained, as a matter of course. If you are going to attract new funding to take the place of capital investment which you cannot afford, I can see no reason on earth why the money for maintenance cannot be found. It comes down in the end to short-sighted short-term budget policies and a council which chooses to run its services on shoe string because it prefers to spend our money on projects to make Councillors look good. That and lax financial management of inefficient, high spending departments and the general culture of incompetence.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Can't argue with you A-B, you've hit the nail on the head!

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

They got the money to write the plan, I believe they wrote it but then the problem was 'match'. This is the money that most funders insist you provide yourself. So in the case of Rhyddings Park's £1m grant, the funders will provide £900k but HBC have to find the remaining 10%. So whilst the bid was written and everyone knew what needed doing but HBC had to raise the £100k. Can it be a coincidence that the Council has managed to find the 'match' money a few months before a certain Councillor is up for re-election.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

It was the very end of July last year - I know this because it was a week before the Mela and it gave us a right headache. We still had to recreate another stage in front of it again this year. Apparently it will be sorted out by next year so we've been told!

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

If its anything like the Broadway fiasco then you could be in for a long wait.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Good for Rhyddings Park, and for Oswaldtwistle, but what do other residents feel about the £100,000 found by HBC in Brtitcliffe's home town when the rest of the Borough's parks are in such a poorly maintained state?

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

They have a handy "emergency fund" aka a slush fund. ;)

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

I would very much like to do a piece about this for the Observer.

Bob - where did these figures come from?

I'm off work this week, but I will either pass it on to a colleague or do it next week.

Anyone got anything to add?

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

The lottery figures come from the report quoted in my initial post you will find a link at the bottom of that post.

For the rest, I think a trawl through back copies of the AO would be your best bet.

At a pinch you could use the Freedom of Information Act and ask HBC to spill the beans - it would be interesting to see what you came up with, if anything. You could also do a search on the forums using various park names as a keyword. We have all written at length on the subject of our parks, particularly Milnshaw, Gatty, and Oak Hill there should be lots of quotable stuff there as well as pictures.

Gayle: Yes, what a coincidence! I wonder where it was diverted from. Strange also that money can be found for this and not for the Community Wardens. But, of course, we all know that it is everybody else's fault that money cannot be found to fund the Wardens and nothing whatever to do with the shameful mismanagement of council funds by the Idiot-in-Chief.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

A few dots are starting to join up in my mind - which is good!

Anyway a few weeks ago I posted the attached thread - I posted it mostly so that you wouldn't all leap on me because the person had a similar name

http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=17889

Anyway, the point of that thread is about an audit on all our green spaces that's being done by some consultants appointed by HBC.

Then this thread started to wander onto the amount of money spent on parks

Then, I received an email a few minutes ago from Hyndburn Community Network

Research on green spaces and outdoor recreation provision
The council has appointed external consultants to undertake a comprehensive audit of parks and gardens, children's play areas, civic spaces, footpaths, cycle ways and bridle paths as well as outdoor facilities such as tennis courts and bowling greens.

The study will examine the quality, distribution and use of spaces and facilities and will include all sites whether managed within the public, private, voluntary or education sector. The consultants will appraise the capacity of space and/or facilities to meet the demands being placed on them now and in the future by seeking to identify the extent and type of use. This will help the council and its partners to secure external funding, improve provision and inform land use planning policy, in terms of protection and future allocation of outdoor recreational space.

If you represent a community, voluntary, faith sector group, private/business or the education sector and have an interest in open and green space please contact the council to get involved in the consultation because they are keen to promote the consultation process and to seek involvement from the wider community.

Contact Planning at HBC for further information:

Tel 388111

Email: [email protected]



Anyway, it all links up nicely to this thread

http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=18437

Sorry, it's been a bit long winded but it would appear that our council is acting on the parks and it is likely to be going for some of the funding.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

I think that you are being a bit over optimistic there Gayle. The purpose of this comprhensive audit is to confirm which bits of public land are surplus to requirments and can thus be put up for sale- remember they are up to their ears in debt. In a report I read on the HBC website some time ago the council had already decided that there was too much open space per head of population and that it might be a good idea to offload some of it.

Re: Behind-the-door-itis
 

Fair enough A-B but at least the report will be prepared ready. It'll make my job easier for when I take my seat on the council and start going for funding!!!!! lol