CROYDON IN CRISIS: A year after they gave a ‘golden handshake’ to the council CEO who helped bankrupt the borough, part of the £38.4m Town Hall budget cuts will impact dozens of charities and community groups.
EXCLUSIVE By STEVEN DOWNES
Hamida Ali: her community fund is about to suffer £400,000 in cuts
It is barely 12 months since the leadership at Croydon’s cash-strapped council authorised a secret payment of £440,000 to the discredited and departing chief exec, Jo “Negreedy” Negrini. Now, in a particularly perverse version of robbing Peter to pay Paul, Croydon Labour’s leaders are planning to reduce grants to the borough’s voluntary sector by a similar amount in 2022-2023.
This is the budget cut that did not get discussed at Monday night’s council meeting, and it seems unlikely that Labour will want to air it at its cabinet meeting next week.
But on top of the massive cut to Council Tax benefits also proposed, the reduction in grants to the voluntary sector will come as a harsh double-whammy for the borough’s vulnerable and least well-off. It is also a massive slap in the face, coming after two years where many voluntary groups have been in the frontline of providing support through the covid pandemic.
Croydon Voluntary Action, the council-funded umbrella body for the sector, this morning issued a statement on behalf of two dozen charity and community groups, expressing the hope that their funding levels will somehow be maintained.
Where these further council cuts will really sting with the inheritors of the crass mismanagement of the bankrupt borough’s finances is that the Croydon Community Fund, which is to lose £400,000 in the next financial year, was the creation of Hamida Ali when she was the cabinet member responsible for the voluntary sector. Continue reading →
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