I am requesting the following information under the Freedom of Information Act.
1. Does the council operate funding schemes whereby individual councillors are provided with funding that they can distribute to charities and other organisations at their discretion? These schemes have different names in different areas, such as “member budgets”, “ward budgets”, “locality budgets” etc. Here is an example of one such scheme - https://www.devon.gov.uk/democracy/councillors-info/locality-budgets/
If the council is uncertain of whether a particular funding scheme fits this criteria, please check with me.
If the answer to question 1 is “no”, the council need not respond to the rest of this FOI request.
If the answer to question 1 is “yes”, please proceed with the remainder of this request.
2. For each year since 2023/24 (including 2026/27 year to date), please list each councillor, their political party/grouping that year, their ward, their annual budget under the scheme(s), and the list of entities they chose to distribute funding to under the scheme(s) covered by question 1. For each recipient entity, please state:
a. The name of the recipient entity (e.g. the name of the charity)
b. The amount of funding
c. What the funding was for (if recorded)
FOI003420 FOI Democratic Services
Short Description
Councillor Funding Schemes and Allocations
Reference number
FOI003420
Date
07/08/2026
Request