Friday, 21 November 2008

First thing this morning I met with our WBC Grants Officer Kim Bloomfield to discuss our own performance to exchange news on local groups. Then I had a little flurry of brief meetings with local groups before we had one of our (now regular) WCVS staff meetings.

On my way home, I dropped in for a coffee with Kate Belinis at Hertfordshire CDA. Nothing has been put in writing, but HCC appear to want the Herts BME Partnership to set up a Race Equality Council service for Hertfordshire. The Herts BME Partnership is interested but has recently agreed a strategic plan with a clear focus on capacity building with BME community organisations. Kate (in her capacity as “joint lead” for the BME Partnership) has been the go-between for all communications and lately HCC are now making an offer direct to CDA.

Herts BME Partnership is not a legal entity so any contract would anyway have to be delivered through an organisation such as Herts CDA. But what about capacity building? What about HCC’s commissioning processes and competitive tendering? Where does the money come from? How can anyone run a county-wide equalities scheme on £30k? I wanted to find out what I could and Kate was of course very helpful.