1. Angela Lamont Project Officer
Tyne Esk LEADER
Angela Lamont
Project Officer
Part of ineligibles funded by Wren.

3. Tyne Esk LEADER Stats £2.58m spent in local area of possible £2.62m
£18.60 per capita East Lothian
£13.11 per capital Midlothian
41 projects
£3.84m match funding leveraged
46 jobs projected by programme end

5. The Transition to the Future….. LEADER Positives
Community Led Community Development – LEADER Approach
Rigorous system fitting for public money
Rigorous system with significantly reduces the chance of projects folding, and money being lost, and of fraud.
Eg:
Control of Asset – if it’s say, renovation to a building, check that building still in applicant hands 5 years beyond project completion, allowing sufficient time for the building to be used for the purpose in the application and reducing the chances of profiteering/personal gain.
Bank checks – LEADER funds retrospectively, so money is paid back to applicants once it’s been paid out by them. We require to see the receipt for the item/from the contractor AND the money leaving the bank account before we’ll pay out. Applicants can find this onerous, but we have a case recently where a fellow retrospective funder was NOT carrying out this check, and on request from the applicant to provide retrospectively they found that they could not. ie: it appears the applicant was falsifying receipts and keeping the money. I’m not sure where we are with this case now but fraud could well have been committed.

6. ESEC letter on UK Shared Prosperity Fund:
LEADER Challenges
ESEC letter on UK Shared Prosperity Fund:
“The Shared Prosperity Fund holds a genuine opportunity to deliver a programme free of the bureaucracy of it’s predecessor programmes with a simplified administrative structure”
Application staged small/medium/large
Retrospective funding
Application staged: Right now 6 – 8 weeks of applicant’s time, full time, regardless of grant size, £10k or £200k.
Staged = smaller amounts simpler to apply for, staff resource not required, easier for voluntary orgs to engage.
Retrospective Funding: we pay a % out once items bought/invoices paid and claims can take some time.
This DOES reduce fraud – we have a bank statement check, to check that payments have come out of the applicants’ bank account before our money is paid to them. Some funds don’t have this check, and there is a case just now of another retrospective funder falling foul and asking for bank statements after claims have been paid, only to find the applicant can’t produce them.
However, it also precludes smaller organisations who don’t have that cash flow applying and benefiting.
Solution: Pay invoices directly as Viridor/Wren do? That was money need never leave the applicant bank account.