A £100,000 gift for the public of East Renfrewshire to allocate to good causes throughout ER.

The public get to choose where the money will be allocated, not the council.

This is part of the Participatory Budgeting

Link to the council article of Participatory Budgeting

Sounds great as does the comments that a member of the press and publicity staff puts up on the council Facebook page in answer to comments from the public.

However, are we looking at nothing but spin?????????????

Before we start, a very good and worthwhile project providing cash to local groups.

Reading all that has been written about this you would be forgiven if you thought that ERC were being very generous.

The money actually comes from the Scottish Government.

Were the awards spread evenly throughout the authority.

We will let you make up your own minds on this.

It transpires that the money provided for this came from the Scottish Government.

In some instances a few of the Scottish Councils match funded the grants and others did not.

Cllr Colm Merrick said recently that the money being used was not new cash, it had already been earmarked for those communities, the difference now is the public will decide where it is allocated.

Unlike an application to the council for a 'grant' on this occasion any unconstituted group could apply.

When it was stated that £75k had went to the Levern Valley and £25k to Eastwood an ERC spokesperson said that was incorrect.

The £100k had been split evenly between 'deprived' areas.

Evenly ?

Barrhead £25k
Auchinback 25K
Neilston £25k


Thornliebank £25k

The first three are the Levern Valley.

We have looked at the 'deprivation' register that is produced by the Scottish Government, in relation to the 'financial' poverty index.

Barrhead is not in the top ten.

Auchenback, a scheme within Barrhead is.

The income deprived DZs and the percentage of the population who are income deprived.

Dunterlie, East Arthurlie and Dovecothall
Auchenback
West Neilston and Uplawmoor
Mearns Village, Westacres and Greenfarm

We have also discovered that Barrhead Housing Association applied for and received £50k of this cash from the Scottish Government which was given to Barrhead groups at the same time.

So in effect £100k was distributed in the Levern Valley and £25k in Thornliebank.

Great, fantastic, love it.

Good luck to the groups who were successful, how about just once ERC spin Department that you stop with the spin.

In addition there must be groups throughout the region that could benefit from cash to provide activities for children, older peeps and peeps with disabilities.

These kinds of provision are required throughput the region.

We will not bore you with all of the details however every time we asked a question the ERC spokesperson appeared to be walking on eggshells in attempts to not answer the questions directly and to just spin.