Monday, 18 May 2009

This is going to be a busy week and it has started with a packed day of meetings. At 8:30 I met with Phil Bailey, an architect retained by Watford Borough Council to do some work on the Holywell Community Centre. He has prepared some good initial plans showing the works we want done at the Centre.

At 10:00 I chaired a meeting of the Watford Community Fund panel, which is overseeing local allocations of Grassroots Grants. This meeting was difficult for three reasons. First, because the chronological profile of grants means that there is less and less money to meet ever rising levels of applications so many groups will be disappointed. Secondly, because one of the panel’s previous decisions has been overturned by the Hertfordshire Community Foundation for reasons we find difficult to agree with. Thirdly, because there are new proposals to review the geographic and demographic profile of grants across the county. Watford will be poorly served if monies are reallocated according to population as we have a small resident population in the borough but a great many people are drawn into the borough to use our shops and services. Despite these potential difficulties, we got through the meeting with good humour and commonsense and agreed to start focusing on the government’s endowment challenge.

At 1:00 I met with Laura Packwood to discuss the piloting of our Watford Good Neighbours scheme. Then at 2:30 Laura and I hosted a meeting of community transport schemes from across south-west Herts. Before leaving the office, I organised this month’s salary payments and caught up on some correspondence.