Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Ward Budgets: £43k Gap in Council Report

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s draft Equality & Diversity report 2024-25, to go before Cabinet on the 12 Novemeber, claims £83,000 in ward grants supporting 99 local organisations. Yet the council’s own 2024–25 ward grants payments according to their payments to suppliers data shows £39,807.70 paid to 48 organisations—£43,192.30 less money and 51 fewer recipients than the headline suggests. Both cannot be true on the same basis.

This isn’t a nit-pick. Ward budgets are a rules-based micro-grant scheme, and the council’s rules are explicit.

What The Scheme Is Supposed To Do –  By The Council’s Own Rules

The council says each of the district’s 30 councillors has “a ‘ward budget’ of up to £3,000 to help community projects,” with the 2025/26 round open and promoted on its site. That’s a potential annual pot of £90,000. The website also sets out who can apply—schools, CICs, charities, community groups, and smaller-precept town/parish councils—which mirrors the beneficiaries name-checked in the Equality & Diversity report (e.g., local schools; CICs).

The formal Terms & Conditions add crucial controls:

• Timebound payments: applications close a few weeks before year-end “to enable sufficient time for grant payments to be finalised within the period.” (So this is designed to be money actually paid within the financial year—not vague intentions.) 

• What counts / what doesn’t: funding can support community, health & wellbeing, safety, facilities, open spaces and cohesion projects—but not ongoing annual costs, backfilling cuts, mainstream running costs, benefits to individuals/private businesses, or retrospective bids. Projects must be delivered within 12 months of receiving funds. 

• Who decides: the ward member decides whether to award a grant (subject to the T&Cs), prioritising local need, value for money, consistency with council policy, and ideally projects in their own ward; applicants can approach multiple members (up to six) but must declare that. 

• No carry-forward: any unallocated ward-budget balance at the closing date “will not be carried over and will return to the general fund.” (So unspent is unspent.) 

• Audit trail: applicants must provide quotes/evidence up-front; keep receipts; provide project updates within six months or on completion; and the council will publish ward-budget grants on its site (grants register / “Your Councillors” pages). 

These rules are meant to make the scheme verifiable: cash moves in-year, recipients and amounts are published, supporting evidence exists, and unspent money reverts.

Where the Council’s Headline Runs Into Its Own Rulebook

If the Equality & Diversity report’s £83,000 / 99 organisations figure is meant to reflect awards/allocations rather than payments, that needs stating plainly—because the T&Cs are set up so that by year-end payments are finalised, and unallocated amounts do not roll forward. If, on the other hand, the report intends to describe money actually distributed, then the published payments for 2024–25 (£39,807.70 to 48 organisations) are the authoritative record—and the headline is wrong by a wide margin. Either way, the narrative and the ledger don’t reconcile, and the scheme’s own publication/audit requirements make that mismatch easy to spot.

Why This Matters

Ward budgets are small but visible proof of local support. Overstating reach or conflating awards with payments not only distorts the public record; it also chips away at confidence in other equality, diversity and community-impact claims. The council’s own rules demand clear evidence, timely payment, no carry-forward, and publication—all designed so anyone can check.

What Needs To Happen Now

1. Publish a reconciliation: Set out, line-by-line, how the £83,000/99 claim maps to actual payments (or correct the claim). If it’s a timing or definition issue (awarded vs paid, different periods), say so explicitly and quantify it.

2. Tie reports to the ledger: Future Equality & Diversity statements should cite the grants register/payments data and include a reconciliation note, consistent with the scheme’s own monitoring and publication rules.

3. Strengthen pre-publication checks: If a figure can’t be reconciled to the published dataset, it shouldn’t appear in a statutory-style report.

Until that happens, the only figure the public can verify is in the council’s payments: £39,807.70 to 48 organisations for 2024–25—not £83,000 to 99.

Conclusion

Bottom line: either £83,000 reached 99 groups or it didn’t. The council published a headline that its own payments data does not support. That’s not a rounding error; it’s a basic governance failure. If officers and members didn’t spot it, oversight isn’t working. Until the claim is corrected—or reconciled with dates, definitions and a line-by-line schedule—the Equality & Diversity report can’t be relied on. Residents deserve numbers that add up, not headlines that flatter; if the basics aren’t checked, the rest is marketing, not accountability.

The Shepway Vox Team

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