Issue - meetings

Two public questions were received:

The first question was submitted by Sam Al-Hamdani,

In response to a question on the spending on a new pitch for Oldham Athletic, Councillor Shah stated that "in the event that clawback is required, to enable the Council to recover any of the grant deemed ineligible, the formal procedure would be for Officers to prepare a formal report for the relevant Cabinet Member(s) and then depending on the nature of the concerns / issues being raised, this could then be escalated to Cabinet. In either occurrence, the formal decision relating to the issues and enactment of clawback would be a matter of public record." She stated further – although not minuted – that this was her understanding, anyway, and that she was not aware of any circumstance – not in her leadership or her time in the cabinet – that has been done behind closed doors in the way that I was describing.

I would like to refer Councillor Shah to the decision – a term which here must be used very loosely – taken with regards to the clawback clause (7.11 Relevant Period) contained within the Grant Funding Agreement dated 19th August 2011, for the new stand at Oldham Athletic. The disposal took place in 2016, while she was in the cabinet. That clawback clause was not pursued. Having had meetings with the senior management team at the Council, I understand that no report was ever produced, and no concerns ever escalated to Cabinet. There is no formal record of any decision on this matter.

Before we even consider the merits of the decision itself, can she explain how this decision was taken with regards to a grant from Oldham Council for £700,000, a very substantial amount of money, with no report, and no formal record of the decision? How can Oldhamers be confident that there weren't other decisions taken in exactly the same way, as she was unaware of this one which took place while she was a cabinet member, and had been for several years? And how can they have confidence that this Labour Council is properly spending and taking care of its budget when decisions like this have been taken without any formal oversight?

Councillor Shah responded, ‘for the purposes of those who aren’t elected members I’ll try and explain in plain English how we write grant agreements to make sure that we actually get the benefit that is agreed for Oldham and the community as part of that grant.

In drafting grant agreements we ensure we are clear about the benefits and conditions that we expect for the grant and we then monitor those conditions or the delivery of those benefits to make sure we get value for the money we give.

I can confirm that the Council has been actively monitoring the conditions of the recent grant agreement for Oldham Athletic. This monitoring has not resulted in any circumstances being identified where it would be necessary to trigger the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4