Area committees who administer council cash to their communities should be given even more resources to tackle poverty, a councillor has argued.
A total of £312,000 was divvied up between the region’s four area committees – Annandale and Eskdale, Nithsdale, Stewartry and Wigtown – last week.
A further £180,000 was shared between the four committees to be spent solely on tackling poverty and inequalities.
However, the money was not split evenly.
Due to a scoring method based on poverty calculations in each area, the cash was divided as follows: Nithsdale – £76,806 (42.67 percent); Wigtown – £45,450 (25.25 percent); Annandale and Eskdale – £34,326 (19.07 percent); and Stewartry – £23,418 (13.01 percent)
Speaking at the council’s communities committee last week, Lochar Councillor Linda Dorward, former co-leader of the council, said: “Child poverty hasn’t moved, and in fact it’s extremely high in Scotland, sitting at 24 percent of all children living in poverty.
“In Dumfries and Galloway it’s up to 27 percent, which is horrendous.
“And given the fact that we’ve moved to have a sub committee for tackling inequalities, I’m wondering if there’s any consensus in upping the allocation in terms of tackling poverty and inequalities to make them a bit more comparable with Nithsdale.”
Calling for the other areas to receive as much financial support as Nithsdale, Councillor Dorward said: “I think in all areas, especially in the west where we’ve got massive issues with child poverty, I’m wondering if we can have a discussion about what people think about perhaps increasing those percentages.”
Liz Manson, the council’s interim head of community services, responded: “We do have a report on poverty and inequalities coming to the next meeting, and as part of that we are looking at the allocation of the funding for poverty and inequalities that you have agreed at full council in your budget for this year.
“These percentages are worked out from a small number of criteria.
“Things like the number of free school meals that are given out and homelessness applications.
“One of the things we’re looking at just now is whether these are still the relevant criteria against which we work out these percentage allocations so that there’s an up to date amount of funding which goes to each area
committee.”
Councillors agreed to discuss the matter again when an updated report on the funding allocation comes back to the communities committee in June.
