The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) (the government department who fund BNDfC) have made a £881,000 reduction to the programme’s budget for the remaining years of the programme. DCLG have done this to all NDCs in the country, not just Burngreave. This means, as it stands at the time of writing this article, the programme has plans to spend more money than it will now receive. Therefore, it falls upon the BNDfC Partnership Board to discuss and decide what they want to do to balance the programme’s outgoings against its incomings. Members have a number of options available to them but they need to weigh these up against the strategic objectives they have planned for the end of the programme in 2011. This is not an easy or enviable task for Partnership Board members to undertake.
By the time this edition of the Burngreave Messenger has been released the BNDfC Partnership Board will have had lengthy discussions at their Away Sessions on 12th and 13th September and will have made some hard decisions on what they plan to do as a result of DCLG’s reduction in BNDfC’s budget.
We will ensure that all decisions made will be published in the next edition of the Messenger. We will write to all projects as soon as we can following the Board meeting on 24th September when decisions will be ratified.