Weekly digest: May 19th

Hello again

Well, I’m not sure what happened to last week’s edition – or rather I do, but only when it was too late to correct. I posted last week’s digest a day late and as such missed our scheduled ‘slot’ for the automated mail services we’ve recently set-up. I’d hoped to overcome the missed deadline by labelling the edition as a ‘newsflash’ rather than the standard ‘latest news’ which should send out messages on a daily basis. Unfortunately, that didn’t work as expected. The glitch has now been sorted but it means last week’s digest has now been included this time. So, you are getting two for the price of one! Sounds like a good deal……but best not repeated.  Normal service resumes next week.

  1. Funding news #1: Outlook a little gloomy
    • It has to be said that this week hasn’t been the greatest one we had. We received formal confirmation late yesterday (Friday 18th) that we were unsuccessful with a bid we submitted to Notts County Council for a grant to fund, primarily, our ongoing admin costs.
    • We submitted the bid late in January for 3 years’ worth of revenue funds that would have sorted out our day-to-day costs. The aim was to give us the head room to focus our fund-raising efforts to cover the one-off costs needed to produce our Plan, publicise our work, and consult with residents.
    • At the time we submitted our application our sponsors gave us firm indications that our bid was strong and would be successful. But, hey-ho, sometimes even the firmest of indications can prove worthless.
    • So, we need look elsewhere for office funding. This is not as straight forward as it sounds since most funding bodies award grants to one-off projects rather than cover ongoing admin costs.
    • It does mean that SG effort has to be redoubled onto fundraising so a couple of us will, unfortunately, suspend working directly on producing the Plan so we can provide support to Denise, our Treasurer, to find alternative sources of funds and submit applications
  2. Funding news #2: But every cloud has a …… 
    • It’s not all doom and gloom on the funding front. Whilst the news from Notts County Council was a blow, we have had some good news relating to our funding application to Locality
    • You may recall that we applied to Locality for a £9,000 grant to cover the costs of producing and distributing our Plan.
    • They have come back to us this week agreeing to fund a good portion of our submission but have a query about the costs we included for some consultancy. Once we have clarified those costs (a query on the day rates) we are pretty confident they will approve the grant
    • However….this time, let’s be a little cautious and avoid counting too many chickens before they come home to roost (to completely mangle metaphors!). Fingers crossed, we hope for some good news in a couple of weeks
  3. And finally……
    • You may have seen the item on BBC local news last week that the DIO (Defence Infrastructure Organisation) have agreed that they will ensure the WW1 memorial on the Barracks will be properly cleaned in time for the commemoration events at the end of June. Whilst this is good news, I remain sceptical that cleaning may not be enough to ensure all the names & inscriptions are fully legible. We’ll see what transpires – hopefully my fears will prove unfounded.
    • Those of you who receive Anna Soubry’s weekly update may have been surprised by the item on HS2. It mentions a meeting held in Nuthall last week with HS2 representatives, who said it was possible to tunnel the entire route through Broxtowe including Long Eaton. Anna intends to raise the matter with the Transport Minister as it was thought this option was ‘out of the question’. Personally, I think a tunnel solution will be prohibitively expensive although I can understand why Long Eaton and Nuthall residents will appreciate the chance to re-open the option.

And since you’ve had a double dose of me this week, I’ll say again:
“That’s all for this week folks. See you next week”

Kind regards
Graham

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