Tividale Pride in Place: £20 Million, Closed Doors and Governance That Still Doesn’t Add Up
I raised concerns when the September papers for the Tividale Neighbourhood Board appeared.
Now the minutes of the 10 September meeting have finally been published.
Have they put those concerns to bed?
No.
To be fair, a couple of things have been clarified. But the bigger questions about transparency, public access, delegated spending and who actually holds the power over this £20 million Pride in Place programme remain unanswered.
And some of what the minutes confirm gives me even more reason to keep watching.
This isn't about trying to wreck Pride in Place. Twenty million pounds properly invested over ten years could make a genuine difference to Tividale.
That's precisely why the governance needs to be watertight before the serious money starts moving.
£20 million of public money — but the public still aren't allowed in
Let's start with the elephant outside the meeting room.
The official September agenda tells us that the Tividale Neighbourhood Board oversees a £20 million Government-funded initiative. It also states, quite plainly, that its meeting is “not open to the public and press”, although the agenda itself is published and questions can be submitted beforehand. Public reports pack 10092026 18… Public reports pack 10092026 18…
I still struggle with that.
This programme continually talks about community involvement, engagement, accountability and residents shaping decisions.
The governance document itself uses phrases such as “open, transparent and robust governance”.
Yet when the Board actually meets to discuss the programme, residents can't sit in the room and listen.
Apparently Pride in Place is “led by you”.
Just not while the decisions are being discussed.
I accept that genuinely confidential matters sometimes need to be heard privately. Commercially sensitive information, personal information and certain contractual matters obviously cannot always be debated in public.
But that's entirely different from making closed meetings the default position.
Why not open the meetings and exclude the public only for genuinely confidential items?
Why not livestream them?
Why not publish submitted public questions and the answers?
If the Board is as open and transparent as its governance documents repeatedly tell us it is, there should be nothing frightening about residents actually watching it work.
We now know a little more about the £10,000 — but not enough
One of my previous questions concerned the Engagement Subgroup.
The September minutes finally clarify that the subgroup has delegated authority to deliver engagement activities within an approved £10,000 budget. They also say the Terms of Reference were to be amended to reflect that authority. Printed minutes 10092026 1800 T…
We also now know that Sandwell Council employees do not have voting rights, which is useful clarification.
And for a subgroup meeting to take expenditure decisions, at least three members must be present. Printed minutes 10092026 1800 T…
That's better than the vague position in the original papers.
But it raises another question.
Are we really comfortable that a meeting with just three members present can potentially make expenditure decisions from a £10,000 delegated budget?
Perhaps there are additional controls sitting behind that. Perhaps officers subsequently check procurement and authorisation.
Fine.
Publish them.
Residents shouldn't have to reverse-engineer financial governance from scattered paragraphs across different meeting packs.
And let's remember what the August papers told us.
There was a £10,000 allocation for the community event, while the working estimate suggested around £3,500 for inflatables and activities and approximately £4,500 in total. Public reports pack 10092026 18…
Again, I'm not suggesting anything improper.
I'm asking a very basic public-money question:
What was actually spent?
If £4,500 was eventually spent from a £10,000 budget, what happened to the balance?
Who were the suppliers?
What was purchased?
What was loaned free by Sandwell Council?
What procurement route was used?
This ought to be published voluntarily rather than dragged out through Freedom of Information requests months later.
“Mandatory” members who aren't necessarily available
The minutes contain another curious bit of governance.
It was proposed that the Chair and MP should be mandatory members of the Engagement Subgroup.
Then, almost immediately, the minutes record that the MP explained that other commitments mean her availability is very limited and she did not want to hold the subgroup back.
The Chair agreed to participate subject to availability. Printed minutes 10092026 1800 T…
So what exactly does “mandatory” mean?
If the subgroup can continue without either of them, they're not really mandatory in any meaningful operational sense.
That's not a criticism of Sarah Coombes MP having other commitments. An MP obviously has a diary full of competing responsibilities.
It is a criticism of governance wording that says one thing while the practical arrangements apparently say another.
Publish the final amended Terms of Reference and clear it up.
Community engagement — still mapping the community while engaging it
This remains one of my biggest concerns.
The 10 September minutes show that work was still continuing to map community organisations across Tividale so that a broad range of groups and stakeholders could be represented.
Yet the flagship Community Day was only ten days away, on 20 September. Printed minutes 10092026 1800 T…
The minutes also say 150 leaflets were to be distributed across local hubs and community centres, alongside school communications, social media and online promotion. Printed minutes 10092026 1800 T…
One hundred and fifty leaflets.
For a neighbourhood of many thousands of people.
That doesn't mean the event itself wasn't successful. These minutes were produced before the event, so they obviously cannot tell us what subsequently happened.
But it does reinforce my concern about the order of things.
Surely you first map the community, identify who rarely gets heard, find ways of reaching them and then undertake the major engagement exercise.
Instead, it risked becoming:
launch event first, finish identifying who needs engaging afterwards.
I now want to see the actual Community Day evaluation.
How many people attended?
How many completed surveys?
How many responses came from different parts of Tividale?
What age groups were represented?
Which organisations participated?
Which groups didn't?
How many paper forms were completed by digitally excluded residents?
Most importantly:
What did residents actually say, and what changed because they said it?
That's real engagement.
Attendance figures and photographs of a busy bouncy castle aren't.
The KPI that still makes me shake my head
The proposed Engagement Subgroup Terms of Reference contained just two remarkably thin Key Performance Indicators.
One was:
“Community Leaders to provide an estimation of number of representatives engaged with”
The other was engagement across Tividale neighbourhood wards. Public reports pack 10092026 18…
An estimation.
We're setting up governance around a £20 million programme and one of our formal measurements of community engagement is apparently somebody's estimate of how many people were engaged.
Come on.
We can do better than that.
The Board should be measuring genuine participation, geographical spread, organisations reached, underrepresented groups, survey response rates, repeat engagement and, crucially, evidence showing how community feedback influenced decisions.
Otherwise we risk another familiar consultation exercise:
“We spoke to lots of people.”
Lovely.
What did they say?
“Lots of things.”
What changed?
Silence.
Eleven votes for governance — but some obvious questions remain
The September minutes record that the Governance and Assurance section was approved by 11 votes in favour, none against and no abstentions. Printed minutes 10092026 1800 T…
That document makes some big claims.
It describes the appointment arrangements as open, transparent, independent, fair and representative.
It says a public Expression of Interest process was used to recruit the Chair and Board members. Public reports pack 10092026 18…
Fine.
Then give residents the evidence.
How many applications were received for Chair?
How many people applied to join the Board?
Where was the opportunity advertised?
How long was it open?
What scoring criteria were used?
How were candidates assessed?
What makes the final membership “representative”?
These aren't accusations.
They are exactly the questions an organisation boasting about transparent governance ought to be delighted to answer.
And what are these mysterious “four lines of defence”?
The Governance and Assurance papers also tell us that the Assurance Framework operates through a:
“four lines of defence” model.
Very impressive.
Unfortunately the document doesn't then appear to tell ordinary residents what those four lines actually are. Public reports pack 10092026 18…
It sounds magnificent in management-speak.
But governance isn't improved by impressive terminology.
Who is line one?
Who checks line one?
Who independently challenges the programme?
Where does internal audit sit?
Where does external assurance sit?
Who can stop expenditure?
Who investigates failures?
Who reports those failures publicly?
If there are four lines of defence, write down the four lines.
It shouldn't require a decoder ring.
Sandwell Council is everywhere in this arrangement
Sandwell Council is the Accountable Body.
It also provides programme-management support, administration, meeting support, project-development assistance and financial/governance arrangements.
Again, that isn't necessarily unusual.
Somebody has to be the accountable body.
But it makes public visibility even more important.
When the same organisation is supporting delivery, administering meetings, maintaining programme information and providing much of the assurance framework, residents need to see where genuinely independent scrutiny enters the picture.
A closed meeting does not help answer that concern.
And who really has the final say?
This question remains unanswered to my satisfaction.
Earlier Board papers explicitly state that the Regeneration Plan will need the Council, the MP and the Board to sign it off. Public reports pack 10092026 18…
So let's have a simple explanation.
What happens if the Board approves something and Sandwell Council doesn't?
What if the Board and Council agree but the MP doesn't?
Does each party effectively possess a veto?
Who controls individual project approvals?
What powers are retained by the Accountable Body?
Where does resident opinion fit when those bodies disagree?
Because that tells us whether this is genuinely community-led or merely community-informed.
There's a difference.
A rather important one.
Some things have improved — but the biggest red flag remains
I will give credit where it is due.
We now know Council officers don't vote on the Engagement Subgroup.
We now have a three-member expenditure quorum.
The £10,000 delegated limit has been recorded.
Paper survey copies were promised for residents who struggle with digital access.
Those are useful developments.
But none of them answer the central transparency problem.
The public still cannot attend the Board meeting.
And until that changes, all the language about openness, accountability and community leadership comes with a rather large asterisk.
This is a £20 million programme lasting ten years.
It could do tremendous good.
It could improve places, support community organisations and leave something worthwhile behind.
But the public need more than consultation events and QR codes.
They need to be able to watch the people making the decisions.
They need spending published.
They need clear voting rules.
They need meaningful performance measures.
They need to know who has the final say.
They need to see the evidence behind claims of fair and representative governance.
And they need answers to questions without having to spend months digging through PDFs.
Because Pride in Place isn't supposed to be something done to Tividale.
It's supposed to be something done with Tividale.
So open the doors.
Publish the evidence.
Show the money.
Explain who holds the power.
And then perhaps the words “Led by You” will start to mean what they say.
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