Pride in Place, Power in a Subgroup? Smethwick’s £20 Million Question
A very long read about community power, public money, three-person subgroups, disappearing distinctions between “approve” and “note”, and why the paperwork matters
LONG READ WARNING: This is not a three-paragraph Facebook rant.
This one involves Government guidance, Sandwell Council reports, Partnership Board minutes, Internal Audit, grant applications, delegations, boundaries, £592,000 of first-year funding and ultimately a programme worth up to £20 million over ten years.
So put the kettle on.
Make a sandwich.
Possibly inform your next of kin.
If you reach the end without once shouting “but who actually makes the decision?” at the screen, you have considerably greater tolerance for local-government governance documents than I do.
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First, a very important ground rule
Before getting into this, I want to make something absolutely clear.
I have no special access to Sandwell Council.
I don't sit on the Smethwick Partnership Board.
I don't attend its private meetings.
I don't receive its confidential papers.
I don't know what advice may have been provided privately by lawyers, Internal Audit, the Monitoring Officer, the Section 151 Officer or the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
I see what everybody else sees.
The public record.
And that is exactly the record I am examining here.
If there is an unpublished document which answers one of the questions raised below, wonderful.
Publish it.
If there is an approved Scheme of Delegation which explains everything, even better.
Publish that too.
But we cannot reasonably be expected to fill gaps in the public record by imagining that somewhere, in an office cupboard guarded by a particularly fierce stapler, sits a piece of paper which makes everything alright.
Nor should we assume the opposite.
So this article distinguishes carefully between:
what the documents prove; what they suggest; what deserves explanation; and what is not proven at all.
That isn't being awkward.
It's called scrutiny.
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What Pride in Place is supposed to be
The Government describes Pride in Place as a programme designed to transfer meaningful influence to local communities.
Smethwick can receive up to £20 million of funding and support over ten years. Nationally, the whole point is that local people help determine priorities rather than everything being decided from Whitehall or the council house. The Government prospectus says Neighbourhood Boards made up of local people are to decide how the money is invested.
The current Smethwick website says something equally encouraging:
«the programme puts power “in our hands as a community” and is designed so people who live and work in Smethwick lead the setting of priorities and shaping of projects.»
Excellent.
I support that.
But once you use phrases like community-led, local control and public money, some awkward questions inevitably follow.
Who actually controls it?
Who makes the decisions?
Who can vote?
Who can overrule whom?
Where are those decisions recorded?
Can residents scrutinise them?
And, above all:
does the machinery underneath the slogan match what the slogan promises?
That is where this gets interesting.
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Some good news first — because this isn't a demolition job
There is quite a bit about Smethwick's programme which appears sensible.
There is an established Partnership Board with representatives from business, community organisations, faith organisations, education, policing, the local MP, councillors and other bodies. The August agenda identifies Alan Taylor as Chair and lists a broad membership.
Government requires a Neighbourhood Board to have at least eight members, with at least 51% living or working within the neighbourhood, an independent Chair, the local MP and at least one councillor. It also expects broad community representation.
Smethwick's own governance documents build that 51% requirement into the structure.
Can I independently prove from the published information that 51% of the current individuals actually live or work inside the defined area?
No.
Their home and employment circumstances are not all publicly evidenced in sufficient detail.
That does not mean the requirement is being breached.
It means the public record doesn't allow me independently to verify it.
There's a difference.
Likewise, Smethwick undertook substantial community engagement before its Regeneration Plan was approved by Government.
So this article is not going to claim the programme sprang fully formed from a committee room while residents were kept in a cupboard.
It didn't.
There was genuine engagement.
The harder question is what happens now, when consultation turns into decisions and money begins to move.
Government guidance is clear that community involvement isn't supposed to end when somebody publishes a consultation report.
It expects engagement to be deep, broad, sustained and ongoing, and says Boards must go back to communities, explain what has happened, show how priorities have been considered and create space for people to hold the Board to account and scrutinise delivery.
That is the test we now need to apply.
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The first-year money
For 2026/27, Smethwick has £592,000 available.
That consists of:
£92,000 ring-fenced for smaller “quick win” projects identified through the earlier engagement work, and £500,000 through the main grant application process offering grants of between £500 and £25,000. The £500,000 itself is split £268,000 capital and £232,000 revenue.
So when we talk below about the £500,000 pot, that is the main Year One application fund, not the entire Year One Pride in Place allocation.
Accuracy matters.
Especially when one is about to criticise other people's accuracy.
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Now we arrive at the £20 million question
Government's March 2026 Delivery Guidance contains a remarkably straightforward sentence:
«“Neighbourhood Boards are the decision makers for funding.”»
It goes further.
The Board gives local people the power to decide how funding is spent.
All Board members have an equal right to vote on Board issues.
And Government describes any subgroups as “advisory sub-groups” supporting the Board's function.
There is not much mist on that particular window.
So now compare that with Smethwick.
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Sandwell's own website says the Board decides
Today, Sandwell's public Smethwick Pride in Place website has a page helpfully entitled:
“Who decides what gets funded?”
Excellent question.
Its answer is:
«“Funding decisions are made by the Smethwick Partnership Board.”»
Simple.
Clear.
Residents reading the website could reasonably conclude that the Partnership Board makes the funding decisions.
Hold that thought.
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Sandwell Cabinet paperwork also points to the Partnership Board
There is another important piece of the public paper trail.
A Sandwell Cabinet report for 15 July 2026 recommended that Cabinet delegate authority to the Smethwick Partnership Board to approve grant allocations for the Pride in Place programme.
It said this was intended to enable timely and compliant administration and described delegation of grant administration and distribution to the relevant Partnership Boards.
I am deliberately precise here.
That is what the Cabinet report recommended.
I am not using that report alone to assert the precise final legal effect of the Cabinet decision without its resulting decision record in front of me.
But it is another public document describing the intended decision-maker as the Partnership Board.
So far we have:
Government: Board decides.
Sandwell website: Board decides.
Cabinet report: delegate approval to Partnership Board.
Quite straightforward.
Then we reach 23 July.
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Internal Audit enters the room
The published minutes of the Smethwick Partnership Board meeting on 23 July record something rather important.
Internal Audit had apparently identified ambiguity over whether the Funding Subgroup or the Partnership Board was responsible for grant decisions.
That is worth pausing over.
We're not talking about a blogger spotting a misplaced comma.
Sandwell's own Internal Audit had identified ambiguity over who actually makes decisions about public grant funding.
Members discussed whether grants should go to the full Board for approval.
The eventual published decision was:
«“The subgroup will approve grant award decisions, and those decisions will be reported to the Board for noting.”»
Ah.
Now we have something rather different.
The Partnership Board is no longer apparently approving ordinary grants.
The Funding Subgroup approves them.
The full Board notes them.
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“Noting” — the great local-government word
For readers who don't spend their leisure time reading council minutes — congratulations on your excellent life choices — “noting” generally means acknowledging information rather than making the decision itself.
If your spouse announces:
“I've bought a 38-foot yacht and named it Municipal Governance,”
and you reply:
“Noted,”
you have not approved the purchase.
You have been informed of the catastrophe.
And that distinction matters when we are talking about who decides where public money goes.
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It gets clearer in August — sort of
The papers for the forthcoming 20 August meeting say the full application stage will be scored by an Independent Scoring Panel and approved by the Funding Subgroup.
The proposed Dispute Resolution Policy says that the Funding Subgroup reviews the scoring report and recommendations under delegated authority.
And how many members are required to make funding decisions?
Three.
A minimum of three Subgroup members can make the funding decision.
The Subgroup formally approves or rejects the proposed funding allocations.
The ordinary outcome is then taken to the full Partnership Board for noting.
So we now have a rather splendid governance sandwich:
Government: Neighbourhood Board decides.
Sandwell website: Partnership Board decides.
Cabinet report: proposed delegation to Partnership Board.
July minutes/August process: Funding Subgroup decides; Board normally notes.
That needs explaining.
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Is that definitely unlawful?
No.
And I am not going to pretend otherwise.
There may be an approved Scheme of Delegation.
There may be MHCLG advice accepting the arrangement.
There may be Monitoring Officer, Section 151 or legal advice explaining exactly how a delegated Subgroup decision remains, in governance terms, a decision of the Board.
I haven't seen those documents.
That is why the right question is not:
“Who has broken the law?”
The right question is:
How does this arrangement comply with Government guidance which says the Neighbourhood Board is the funding decision-maker, particularly where ordinary awards can apparently be determined by a Subgroup quorum of three and merely noted by the full Board?
If there is a simple answer, let's have it.
And please publish the Pride in Place Scheme of Delegation while you're at it.
That document should settle an awful lot.
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And who are the three?
This brings us to the Subgroup itself.
The public August report tells us the Subgroup met on 31 July and says members declared actual, potential or perceived conflicts of interest, which were managed appropriately.
Good.
But if this Subgroup is actually making the ordinary funding decisions, I would expect a particularly strong public audit trail.
Who are all the members?
Who attended on 31 July?
Who declared what interest?
Who withdrew from which discussion?
Who voted?
What was the vote?
Where is the Subgroup's formal decision log?
Perhaps all this exists somewhere.
Again, I can only work from what the public can see.
And Government's transparency requirements are not particularly shy.
Neighbourhood Boards are expected to publish governance arrangements, meeting minutes and decision logs, a documented decision-making process and voting rights, Board papers within five working days, draft minutes within ten working days, final minutes, conflicts of interest and transparent records of all Pride in Place spending. The default position should be that papers are open to the public.
That is quite a standard.
So if a three-person quorum is making ordinary grant decisions, “trust us, conflicts were managed appropriately” is reassuring.
But showing us the governance trail is better.
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A meeting about community control which the community cannot attend
The front page of the August agenda contains another wonderfully awkward juxtaposition.
The Smethwick Partnership Board oversees a programme designed around community control.
And:
«“This meeting of the Smethwick Partnership Board is not open to the public and press.”»
Now, before anyone leaps for the legal stationery cupboard, I have not found anything in the national Pride in Place guidance saying every physical Board meeting must itself be open to the public.
So I am not claiming the closed meeting is a proven breach of the national rules.
But Government does require transparency and explicitly says Boards must create space for communities to hold them to account and scrutinise how plans are being put into practice.
So perhaps the better question is:
Even if closing the meetings is permitted, is it really the best expression of a programme whose entire philosophy is community control?
“Welcome to your community-led programme. Kindly remain outside.”
It does rather write its own satire.
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And there may be a publication-timing question too
The August agenda is dated for a meeting on Thursday 20 August and gives a stated despatch date of 14 August.
Government says Board papers should be published within five working days in advance of the meeting.
Smethwick's own governance arrangements have also referred to five clear working days.
On the face of the dates printed on the document, the period between 14 and 20 August appears rather tight.
I am not declaring a breach because the papers may have been published electronically at a different point or there may be a particular interpretation of the timetable.
But it is another perfectly reasonable question:
When precisely was the public pack published, and did it meet the five-working-day requirement?
Small point?
Perhaps.
But transparency requirements aren't supposed to become optional because everybody is busy.
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Now to the applications
By 12 August, 109 organisations had contacted the Neighbourhood Development Officer.
That sounds impressive.
The breakdown is rather more informative.
Fifty were general enquiries.
Fifty-four were initial idea discussions.
Three were recorded as help developing a project.
Two involved support completing an Expression of Interest.
None were recorded as help developing or completing a full application at that point.
Again, that doesn't mean support doesn't exist.
Sandwell does provide guidance and an NDO support process.
But it raises an important Pride in Place question.
Government wants communities to develop capacity and specifically warns against decision-making becoming dominated by people with the loudest voices or those already best equipped to navigate official processes. It expects outreach to groups who may struggle with conventional engagement.
A professionally staffed charity with funding experience is going to find a grant application rather less daunting than three neighbours with a good idea, a Facebook group and somebody's kitchen table.
Community empowerment cannot simply mean:
“Here is a form. May the best constitution win.”
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Thirty-two EOIs became twenty-eight
The first funding round produced 32 Expressions of Interest.
Four were not reviewed because those applicants had not undertaken the required pre-application discussion with the Neighbourhood Development Officer.
Twenty-eight were therefore reviewed by the Funding Subgroup.
And that is where the boundary issue arrives.
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The boundary — and another change in tone
At the 23 July Partnership Board meeting, published minutes show members discussing organisations close to the Smethwick boundary.
The recorded approach was relatively flexible: applications demonstrating clear benefit for Smethwick residents could be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Then, on 31 July, the Funding Subgroup faced significant demand.
The August report states that the Subgroup agreed only to accept EOIs from organisations formally registered within Smethwick during that round.
All applicants were subsequently informed that Smethwick-registered organisations were being prioritised.
The current Sandwell website now explicitly says applicants to the Year One £500–£25,000 programme must be organisations based in the Smethwick Pride in Place investment boundary area.
So did the rules change after launch?
I don't know.
And neither should anyone responsibly claim to know until we see the exact guidance that was live on 1 July.
That is important.
The launch announcement itself spoke about organisations working for the benefit of Smethwick communities, but the full guidance linked from it may already have contained the registered-address restriction.
We need the original 1 July documents and ideally their revision history.
Until then the factual position is:
the Board discussed case-by-case flexibility on 23 July;
the Subgroup applied a much firmer registered-location approach on 31 July;
and today's website contains that strict eligibility requirement.
That chronology deserves an explanation.
Nothing more dramatic needs to be invented.
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Government itself is actually more flexible
Here is where the national guidance becomes particularly interesting.
MHCLG says Pride in Place money is principally for the benefit of residents within the agreed area.
Perfectly reasonable.
But it also expressly says a Board may decide that the best way to serve residents inside the boundary is to invest in an asset technically outside it.
Indeed the guidance says there are no restrictions on funding being spent outside the area, provided the decision is first and foremost based on the needs and aspirations of residents in the Pride in Place area and has proper Board/community rationale.
In other words, the strict “your organisation must be based inside the line” approach is a local grant-scheme choice, not something Westminster forced upon Smethwick.
Again, local schemes can impose tighter criteria.
But let's not confuse local choices with national requirements.
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The 80-metre problem
One application demonstrates this rather neatly.
4 Community Trust was reported as being approximately 80 metres outside the investment boundary.
Its proposal was considered to meet the eligibility and project criteria in other respects, but it did not progress because the organisation was outside the boundary.
The Subgroup referred to consistency and transparency.
Eighty metres.
In local-government terms, presumably that's practically France.
I am not arguing that this particular applicant should receive money.
I am arguing that if Pride in Place is fundamentally about who benefits, the public deserves to understand why an organisation's administrative location became decisive even where the national programme itself allows investment beyond the boundary when residents inside it are the principal beneficiaries.
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Fourteen in, fourteen out
The eventual Round One picture is striking.
Of the 28 EOIs reviewed:
14 were from Smethwick and all 14 progressed.
6 were from elsewhere in Sandwell and none progressed.
8 were from outside Sandwell and none progressed.
That does not prove anything improper.
It does show exactly how powerful the geographical filter became.
Once you passed the location test, every one of the 14 Smethwick EOIs advanced to the full application stage.
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And Smethwick ward itself got zero
The distribution among those 14 is also worth recording.
St Paul's: 9
Soho and Victoria: 4
Bearwood: 1
Smethwick ward: 0.
There were, however, organisations from Smethwick ward contacting the NDO.
So this is not evidence that nobody there was interested.
Again, it proves no bias and no wrongdoing.
But a genuinely community-led programme should surely ask:
why did one whole ward produce no EOI progressing through this first batch?
Government specifically says community involvement shouldn't become dominated by those with the loudest voices and should reach groups who are commonly left out.
An application process measures who successfully navigates an application process.
That isn't always the same thing as measuring need.
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Was the £500,000 already overwhelmed?
The 28 reviewed EOIs requested approximately:
£349,095 revenue
and
£216,515.90 capital
for a combined total of roughly £565,611.
So yes — on the face of those initial asks, demand exceeded the £500,000 main application pot by roughly £65,611.
But after applying the Smethwick-based filter, the 14 applications invited forward collectively sought approximately £260,627 based on the published figures.
That does not mean the Subgroup was wrong to manage demand.
There are more rounds.
Revenue and capital are separate.
Figures can change.
Money may need reserving.
But it does mean the public deserves a fuller explanation of how the financial pressure translated into the particular eligibility approach chosen.
If the answer is:
“We need to preserve sufficient funding for later rounds and maintain a balanced capital/revenue programme,”
fine.
Say so.
Numbers are wonderfully helpful things.
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The Strategic Priority Override
The revised August Dispute Resolution Policy contains another intriguing device.
Applications will be independently scored.
If an application fails to reach the minimum assessment threshold, you might reasonably assume that is the end of matters.
Not necessarily.
A new Strategic Priority Override would allow the Funding Subgroup to recommend a below-threshold application if it believes the project addresses an important strategic priority not otherwise covered by higher-scoring applications.
The failed score, threshold, rationale, benefits, risks and mitigations must be documented, and the full Partnership Board would have to consider the exception rather than the Subgroup approving it alone.
Now, contrary to what some might expect, I don't think that is automatically a bad thing.
Pride in Place is meant to give communities discretion.
Sometimes a spreadsheet score will not perfectly capture strategic need.
The important word is:
exceptional.
If this provision is used, the public should see:
the failed score;
the threshold;
the strategic reason;
the declarations of interest;
the voting;
and the final justification.
No mystery.
No strategic fairy dust.
No “computer says no but committee says yes because reasons.”
Transparency is the safeguard.
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The conflict-of-interest policy needs another look
The July minutes say Internal Audit recommended that Board and Subgroup members should not provide advice or support to applicants.
If approached, they should direct applicants to the Neighbourhood Development Officer and declare the contact.
That seems extremely sensible.
Yet the revised August Conflict of Interest Policy says:
«“Members can offer advise only...”»
before explaining that they may subsequently have to withdraw from discussion.
Firstly, advice, not advise.
Ten minutes in the naughty corner with an Oxford dictionary.
More importantly, which is it?
Members should not advise applicants?
Or:
Members may advise applicants and then declare it?
Those are materially different safeguards.
When the same people may be involved in deciding which organisations get public money, the wording should be crystal clear.
There is a meeting on 20 August specifically being asked to approve the revised policy.
I hope somebody asks the question before ticking the box.
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Direct commissions: apparently best enjoyed verbally
The Board has also been progressing direct commissioned projects including benches, picnic tables, railings and related public-realm works.
Some of these appear to originate from earlier community engagement, which is a positive point.
But the August agenda once again provides only a verbal update on direct commissions.
Government, meanwhile, says Boards should publish transparent records of all Pride in Place spend.
Perhaps full costs, procurement routes and suppliers are published elsewhere.
If so, point residents to them.
But the public agenda itself does not provide the basic written audit trail I would expect:
How much?
Which supplier?
What procurement route?
What was bought?
What consultation supported it?
Who owns it?
Who maintains it?
It is difficult to scrutinise a verbal update to a meeting you aren't allowed into.
A small administrative conundrum.
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Youth engagement — the Board itself admits there's more work to do
One area where the Board deserves credit is that members themselves recognised shortcomings in youth engagement.
The July minutes acknowledge limited Youth Forum attendance, difficulties with daytime participation, educational commitments, missed opportunities with schools and concern that existing participants might not represent a broad cross-section of Smethwick's young people.
The proposed solution — going out to places where young people already gather rather than expecting them to enter formal committee structures — makes sense.
Government expects exactly this sort of sustained outreach.
The test now is whether it happens.
Community engagement is not measured by the number of engagement plans produced.
It is measured by whether people previously missing from the room actually gain influence over what happens.
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One more uncomfortable bit of wording
Smethwick's Terms of Reference have also contained provisions requiring Board members to promote the programme positively and refrain from negative statements or criticism.
Government's own social-media advice does indeed encourage communications to be positive, factual and professional.
Fair enough.
Nobody needs a Partnership Board member starting Facebook wars at two in the morning.
But Government also requires the programme to operate in an open, constructive and honest manner and explicitly expects community accountability and scrutiny.
There is therefore a difference between:
behaving professionally
and
being required not to criticise the programme.
A “critical friend” who is only permitted to say nice things isn't a critical friend.
It's a brochure.
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This is not evidence of corruption
And this section is important.
Nothing I have seen establishes corruption.
Nothing establishes fraud.
Nothing establishes political favouritism.
Nothing establishes that a successful applicant has behaved improperly.
Nothing establishes that grant scoring has been manipulated.
Nothing establishes that somebody has secretly pocketed public money.
Nothing establishes that the Subgroup delegation is unlawful.
Nothing establishes that closed meetings breach national Pride in Place rules.
Nothing establishes that the eligibility criteria were definitely changed after applications opened.
Those are not claims I am making.
What the public documents do establish are contradictions, ambiguities and unanswered governance questions.
And public-money governance does not have to be corrupt before residents are entitled to ask whether it could be clearer.
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The biggest contradiction remains remarkably simple
Strip away the acronyms.
Strip away the policy wording.
Strip away the terms like fiduciary risk, strategic priority exception, NDO contact tracker and delegated authority.
We are left with this:
Government says the Neighbourhood Board is the funding decision-maker.
Sandwell's website tells residents the Smethwick Partnership Board makes the funding decisions.
A July Cabinet report recommended delegating grant approval to the Smethwick Partnership Board.
The Partnership Board's July minutes say the Funding Subgroup will approve grants and the Board will merely note them.
The August policy says a Funding Subgroup quorum of three can make ordinary grant decisions.
That is the question.
Everything else is garnish.
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What I would like answered on 20 August
Here is the short version — which, after everything above, is admittedly a relative concept.
1. Who legally/programmatically makes the £500–£25,000 Pride in Place grant decision: the Partnership Board or the Funding Subgroup?
2. How does Subgroup approval followed by Board “noting” comply with MHCLG guidance stating that Neighbourhood Boards are the decision-makers for funding?
3. Please publish the approved Pride in Place Scheme of Delegation.
4. Who currently sits on the Funding Subgroup, who attended on 31 July, what conflicts were declared, who withdrew and how were decisions voted upon?
5. Is there a public Funding Subgroup decision log?
6. What exact eligibility guidance was available to applicants on 1 July, and did it already require the organisation itself to be registered/based inside the Smethwick boundary?
7. If that rule already existed, why was case-by-case treatment of near-boundary organisations being discussed on 23 July?
8. Why did Smethwick choose a stricter geographical approach for this particular grant scheme when national guidance explicitly allows spending outside the boundary where that best benefits residents inside it?
9. Why did no Smethwick ward EOI progress in the first reviewed batch, and what engagement will now take place there?
10. Will every use of the Strategic Priority Override be published with the failed score and full justification?
11. Can Board/Subgroup members advise grant applicants or not? Please reconcile the August policy with the Internal Audit advice recorded in July.
12. Where can residents see the detailed expenditure and procurement trail for Pride in Place direct commissions?
13. Did the 20 August papers meet the five-working-day publication requirement?
14. What practical mechanism allows ordinary Smethwick residents — including those unaffiliated to established organisations — to hold the Partnership Board to account during delivery?
There.
Fourteen questions.
Considerably cheaper than a public inquiry.
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Pride in Place deserves to succeed
And this is perhaps the most important point.
I want schemes like Pride in Place to work.
For too long, communities have watched enormous regeneration schemes descend from above, complete with glossy artist's impressions, consultant-speak and promises that somehow become less visible as soon as the launch photography is finished.
Giving residents real influence over local investment is a good idea.
Smethwick has genuine community organisations doing excellent work.
It has engaged residents.
It has a Government-approved plan.
It has officers identifying planning, procurement and value-for-money issues.
Internal Audit is clearly asking questions.
There are safeguards.
There are positive signs.
That is exactly why we should get the governance right now.
This is a ten-year programme.
The first grant round is not merely about a few applications.
It is setting precedents for how up to £20 million of community-focused investment will be overseen.
Get the transparency right in Year One and trust can grow.
Get it wrong and every future decision will be accompanied by suspicion which may have been entirely avoidable.
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The public shouldn't need a detective badge
Residents should not have to read five different documents to work out who decides whether a grant gets approved.
The council website should match the governance documents.
The governance documents should match the Scheme of Delegation.
The Scheme of Delegation should match Government requirements.
The Subgroup's role should be obvious.
Conflicts should be visible.
Decisions should be traceable.
Expenditure should be published.
And if somebody asks a perfectly reasonable question about any of it, the response should not require translation from Advanced Municipal Hieroglyphics.
That is what transparency looks like.
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Pride in Place?
Absolutely.
But perhaps we could have a little Pride in Process as well.
Because if this really is about putting power into the hands of Smethwick's communities, residents should be able to see precisely whose hands are actually on the controls.
And if the answer is completely straightforward, then publishing it should be the easiest decision the Board makes all year.
Long read over.
You may now collect your certificate, refill the kettle and rejoin normal society.
