Grant Anyone?

Where does the money go? You know the story by now. Local newspaper article states 'Grant Funding available For Communities' or you search online looking for help with your new business or community project and see that there is a grant available from the Welsh Assembly or your local council. You apply and get a form back, which states that you must match fund the amount you are looking for. There is a slight problem there already. You are applying because you do not have the funds. There is the first hurdle and you may just fall. If you happen to have those funds then you may progress. Now you have to fill in the forms, which are not that easy and they go before s a mystery person or persons who decide who to allocate the money to. Sometimes you might get a visit form this person because as with most grants, there is a whole business established behind the management paying a rather decent wage, more often than not. A heck of a lot of the money available has already ben spent on employing people to administer grants. You may just be lucky in that there is actually something left in the pot. Sometimes the grant is handed down to a local body such as the local council who now decide who is going to get the grant. This could be for work to be undertaken in the community, which has already been decided on by the council. Now comes the bit where the decision to appoint a contractor who gets paid the money from the grant. Perhaps you run a mall business in the town and as you cannot get any grants, your business is struggling and you really need that local work. Here again, you may fall at this hurdle. You see there are no hard and fast rules only guidelines, which are discretionary. That means in a nutshell that the money can be awarded to whoever they like and usually it is awarded to people they like rather than people in need. It would be interesting to look at the history of grants awarded in any given town in Carmarthenshire spanning the last decade just to see who received the grant payments. Whenever there is a pot of cash available you can bet that not only has that knowledge been available long before the announcement in the local press, but it has usually been spoken for in rooms with lovely checkered tiles.What of the small business? Well, the contracts usually go to family, friends and associates of said gatekeepers. Check out the payments made by your local council, you might be unpleasantly surprised.

A Traditional Butcher's Shop