East Lothian councillors have agreed to create a single committee to oversee £13million in community funds despite concerns from some members.
A report to elected members last week recommended the four Common Good Committees which decide on grants for each of the towns are merged into one group.
However some councillors questioned whether they should be making decisions outside their own wards.
Common good funds are overseen by the council for Dunbar, North Berwick, Haddington and Musselburgh which has the largest by far at an estimated £9million.
Previously the ward councillors for each of the town areas sat on their local committee with the ability to decide on grants of up to £10,000.
Now the councillors will sit on one single committee which will hear applications from all areas and be given the power to hand out up to £50,000 without it coming before the full council.
Officers told the meeting last week that the decision to merge the committees came out of a review of the common good funds saying it was “to try and improve the overall governance around the committees”
They said the new committee would “have oversight of the management of
Common Good assets” adding council officers would have delegated authority to carry out schedule maintenance saying “any unscheduled or urgent maintenance will also be delegated to officers, and reported to the committee at the earliest opportunity”.
Councillor Shamin Akhtar, who sat on the Haddington Common Good Fund committee voiced concern over the new proposals saying: “I am not a custodian of Musselburgh Common Good or Dunbar Common Good for example and I would feel very uncomfortable making decisions on applications for Musselburgh because Musselburgh councillors have that local intelligence.”
And Councillor Jeremy Findlay said that while he welcomed the move to give community councils more of a say in the use of the funds he did not approve of changing the way the funds had been overseen.
He said: “Fundamentally I think it is wrong that councillors from other areas could potentially be able to override the views of local councillors.”
Council leader Norman Hampshire however said that the bigger committee would make it easier to make decisions on applications adding that the Musselburgh Common Good Fund which required three of the four elected members to be present at a meeting often found it hard to be quorate.
Councillor Hampshire, who sat on the North Berwick committee added: “I would hope that elected members across the county, if you had local members arguing for a particular application it would be supported, This is about getting money to our communities.”
By Marie Sharp Local Democracy Reporter
