Each ward in Stockport gets £3,000 of area fuflexibility funding each year.  Typically, this is given to local organisations applying for funding.  It can also be used for other projects to improve the ward (e.g. in Heald Green they spent around £7,000 on some additional paving improvements in the village centre, on top of the main improvements along the frontage that came from central funding).

Officially, I think the area committee as a whole has to approve each allocation.  In practice, it’s left to the three councillors for each ward to decide how their ward spends its money, and I think we’ve always managed to agree.

In the last meeting we gave £1,200 to the Gatley festival, to help fund the temporary hard surface laid down around the entrance to the field.  That involved spending the last of our 2009/10 budget and a little of the 2010/11 budget.

So for this year (up to April 2011) we have £2703.67.

At this meeting there was a bumper crop of applications – all very worthwhile and all ones we wanted to support.

Cheadle & Gatley Football Club were looking for £2,000 towards kits for their 250+ members.  It’s a great club that does a lot for young people across the area, with 75% coming from our ward and most of the rest from Heald Green.

We allocated £1,000 from Cheadle & Gatley, with £500 from Heald Green and our colleagues in Cheadle Hulme North kindly giving a further £250, so we were able to give them £1,750 in total.

Acorn, Ash & Chestnut Avenues Residents Association asked for  £64.99 to enable their secretary to print minutes, leaflets etc, and we were happy to give that.

Friends of Hall Street Green in Cheadle wanted £1,000 towards the excellent project their working on to enhance the Green (in total it’s over £35,000 and they’re applying for grants from a variety of different places).

So that leaves us with £638.68 for the rest of the year up to April 2011 – wish it could be more!

We sadly felt unable to make a contribution towards the Scouts Japan 2010 trip.  The total cost of the trip, for 150 Scouts and Leaders, is £300,000 and they still need to raise a little over £100,000 to meet the target.  Unfortunately, we didn’t feel we could help.  Not only would our money have barely made a dent in the total; it wasn’t really something specific for our area.

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