Tividale Pride in Place — £20 Million, Closed Doors, Restricted Plans and Now Who Gets the Money?

 

Sandwell Insight: Tividale Pride in Place — £20 Million, Closed Doors, Restricted Plans and Now Who Gets the Money?

Tividale’s Pride in Place programme is beginning to move into a very different phase.

The bouncy castles, surveys, slogans and launch events were the easy bit.

Now we are getting into the serious stuff.

A ten-year Regeneration Plan.

Grant funding.

Scoring applications.

Deciding who gets money.

And, potentially, creating a completely separate organisation such as a CIC, CIO or Community Benefit Society to help deliver the programme.

All from a Government-funded pot worth up to £20 million.

And yet the Tividale Neighbourhood Board still meets behind closed doors.

Yes. Really.

The front of the October agenda once again states that the meeting is “not open to the public and press”. Residents can submit questions beforehand, but they cannot sit in the room and listen to the actual discussion.

For something supposedly built around community power and community engagement, that contradiction is becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

OPEN, TRANSPARENT... BUT PLEASE STAY OUTSIDE

The Board oversees a £20 million Government-funded Pride in Place programme and is developing a ten-year Regeneration Plan and four-year Investment Plan.

This is no longer a talking shop discussing a few flower beds.

Decisions being shaped now could determine where millions of pounds go, which organisations benefit, what projects are prioritised and possibly even what organisation eventually controls delivery.

Yet ordinary residents and the press still cannot observe the meetings.

I keep coming back to the same question:

Why?

There will obviously be occasions when genuinely confidential material needs to be considered privately.

Nobody sensible disputes that.

But that is entirely different from excluding the public from the whole meeting as a matter of course.

Open the meeting.

Go into private session when there is a legitimate reason.

Then come back into public session.

It really isn't revolutionary governance.

THE REGENERATION PLAN WAS RESTRICTED

And then we get to Agenda Item 6.

The public agenda says simply:

“Document is Restricted.”

This was the draft Regeneration Plan.

The plan which is supposed to reflect what the people of Tividale want for their community over the next decade.

The subsequent minutes tell us that the Board was shown a draft covering cleaner, safer and greener neighbourhoods, children and young people, employment and skills, community facilities, businesses, health and wellbeing and the Board's role in overseeing investment.

So why couldn't residents see it?

Perhaps there was a legitimate reason.

If there was, tell us.

The public pack provides no explanation beyond the word “Restricted”.

If residents are supposed to help shape this plan, surely they ought to be able to see the draft before it becomes the finished article.

Otherwise consultation risks becoming:

Tell us what you think.

We'll write the plan.

We'll discuss it privately.

Then we'll show you what we decided.

That isn't quite what most people would understand by community-led regeneration.

THE FUN DAY — GOOD TURNOUT, BUT LET'S NOT OVERSELL IT

Credit where it is due.

The Tividale Fun Day on 20 September appears to have attracted a very healthy turnout.

The report estimates at least 700 people, around 300 families, with 403 individual comments collected.

For an event arranged at fairly short notice, that looks encouraging.

Residents raised four main themes:

Parks, green spaces, play and sport.

Children, young people, community activities and facilities.

A cleaner, safer and greener Tividale.

Roads, parking, transport and local infrastructure.

None of that surprises me.

And it is useful information.

But let's not pretend that a family fun day involving several hundred people is a referendum on how £20 million should be spent over ten years.

Even the Board recognises the gaps.

There was little or no significant feedback covering regeneration and heritage, housing, work and skills, cohesion, education and opportunity, or community power.

That matters.

A parent attending a fun day with children is understandably more likely to mention playgrounds, roads, cleanliness and youth activities than start delivering a policy paper on productivity and community governance.

The Board therefore intends further workshops and targeted engagement with young people, faith groups, older people, community organisations, businesses and public bodies.

Good.

That needs to happen.

But there is another danger.

Government has its list of priority areas.

Residents have their own priorities.

The Board must not start trying to manufacture public demand for Government headings simply because nobody mentioned them at the Fun Day.

If residents don't think something is a priority, record that too.

Community engagement shouldn't be an exercise in steering residents towards the answers the programme wants.

700 PEOPLE... APPROXIMATELY

There is also a rather telling little admission.

The Fun Day attendance was estimated.

One of the lessons learned?

Use a clicker next time to actually count people.

Regular readers may remember that I previously questioned an engagement KPI based on an “estimation” of people engaged.

Well, here we are.

It isn't a catastrophe.

But if engagement figures are going to be quoted as evidence supporting a £20 million programme, count people properly.

Data should be data.

Not “there looked like about 700”.

NOW WE GET TO THE MONEY

This is where things become much more interesting.

Agenda Item 7 begins considering how grants will eventually be awarded.

And alongside that comes a much bigger question:

What does the Tividale Neighbourhood Board itself eventually become?

The report offers three possibilities.

Keep the existing Board while building capacity.

Partner with an existing community organisation.

Or create an independent organisation such as a Community Interest Company, Charitable Incorporated Organisation or Community Benefit Society.

Now we are talking about serious governance.

Creating a new organisation isn't just changing a logo and opening another bank account.

Who controls it?

Who appoints the directors or trustees?

Would current Board members automatically transfer across?

Would councillors or the MP have positions?

Would it employ staff?

Could it own property?

Could it hold assets bought with Pride in Place money?

Could it apply for funding itself?

Could it award money to organisations connected with its members?

Who audits it?

Who can remove its leadership?

And what happens to the organisation when the ten years and the Government money come to an end?

Those questions need answering before anybody gets carried away with the fashionable phrase “community-led organisation”.

Because community-led can mean something genuinely democratic.

It can also mean six people sitting on the board of a company.

Those aren't necessarily the same thing.

THE GRANT-MAKING RED FLAGS

The Board is also beginning to shape the grant programme itself.

The October papers say it needs to consider purpose, eligibility, funding levels, applications, assessment, decision-making and monitoring. The actual detailed scheme is supposed to return to the Board before launch.

The minutes say a scoring framework was among the ideas discussed so applications can be assessed consistently against Pride in Place priorities.

Again, perfectly sensible.

But before one pound is awarded, I want to see proper safeguards.

Every application should face the same published criteria.

Scores should be recorded.

Conflicts should be declared.

Members connected to applicants should leave the decision entirely.

Awards should be published.

Reasons should be given.

Performance should be monitored.

Money should be recoverable where grant conditions are breached.

And the public should be able to see enough information to understand why Organisation A got £20,000 while Organisation B got nothing.

That becomes especially important because Board members quite properly come from schools, charities, faith organisations and community groups.

Local knowledge is valuable.

But local connections create potential conflicts.

The answer isn't to exclude everybody with community experience.

The answer is rigorous transparency.

WHO GETS TO MARK THE APPLICATIONS?

There are some very basic questions still to answer.

Will the full Board make grant decisions?

A subgroup?

Council officers?

An independent assessment panel?

Will councillors vote?

Will the MP vote?

What happens when a Board member has links with an applicant?

Will the scores themselves be published?

Will applicants be allowed to challenge a factual error?

Will there be maximum awards?

Will one organisation be allowed multiple grants?

Will newly-created organisations qualify?

Will companies qualify?

Will organisations based outside Tividale qualify where they claim benefit to Tividale residents?

These aren't troublesome questions.

They're the questions that prevent trouble later.

A SMALLER BOARD AROUND THE TABLE

It is also worth noting that several members were absent from the 8 October meeting, including Sarah Coombes MP and Cllr Ray Nock. The recorded attendance amounts to eight Board members, and the later vote on changing the tagline was eight in favour.

There is nothing improper in that. People have other responsibilities and meetings must continue.

But as the Board moves towards major financial and organisational decisions, quorum and voting arrangements matter increasingly.

A discussion about changing “Together, Transforming Tividale” to “Transforming Tividale Together” is one thing.

A decision affecting hundreds of thousands of pounds is something else entirely.

THE TAGLINE GOT A VOTE. THE PUBLIC STILL DIDN'T GET A SEAT.

Yes, the Board unanimously changed the tagline.

We now have:

“Transforming Tividale Together.”

Fine.

Personally, I would put this one on the banner:

“Transforming Tividale Together — except during Board meetings.”

Because unless the transparency catches up with the branding, that's the problem.

THE QUESTIONS THAT NOW NEED ANSWERS

Before this programme moves further into grants, investment and possible new organisations, these questions should be answered publicly:

Why are Board meetings still closed to residents and the press?

Why was the draft Regeneration Plan restricted?

When will the full draft plan be published?

What was the final cost of the September Fun Day?

Will the 403 comments be published in anonymised form?

How many people have now completed the online survey?

How representative are those responses geographically and demographically?

How will resident priorities be distinguished from Government programme headings?

What legal structure is being considered for the future Board?

Who would control any CIC, CIO or Community Benefit Society?

Who would appoint its directors or trustees?

Who would own assets acquired with Pride in Place money?

Will Board members or organisations connected with them be eligible for grant funding?

Who will assess grant applications?

Will scoring and decision reasons be published?

What limits will apply to individual grants?

How will conflicts of interest be independently policed?

And will there be a public record showing exactly where every pound ultimately went?

THERE IS STILL TIME TO GET THIS RIGHT

I remain supportive of the principle behind Pride in Place.

Tividale has a rare opportunity.

£20 million over ten years could create lasting improvements.

But programmes like this don't usually go wrong because somebody started out intending to waste millions.

Problems begin when governance is vague.

When conflicts aren't properly managed.

When decisions migrate into subgroups.

When “community engagement” becomes a statistic.

When public money starts flowing through organisations residents barely understand.

And when scrutiny arrives after the money has already gone.

That is why the questions need asking now.

Not in 2032.

Not after the audit report.

Not after somebody discovers a conflict.

Now.

The Tividale Board is moving beyond consultation and branding and into the territory where public money, organisations, grants and long-term power meet.

That is exactly when the doors should be opening wider.

Instead, they remain closed.

For a programme branded around taking back control and putting communities at the centre, that remains the biggest red flag of all.

Transforming Tividale Together?

Absolutely.

But “together” should include the residents sitting outside the meeting room.

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