I spent much of today at a meeting at Shire Hall of a panel considering bids by local groups for the council’s Innovate and Cultivate funds. During the meeting, I noted in the paperwork that several pieces of work by the council itself, notably supporting adults with learning difficulties into employment, were currently the subject of funding bids by the council to the European Social Fund.
Brexit means the loss of the opportunity for the county council to bid into this fund. Existing funded projects would presumably complete their term, but thereafter these funds would dry up, creating funding gaps for the council itself but also for other organisations in Cambridgeshire who also currently enjoy the benefit of European Social Fund access.
I have written to ask the council whether its work on Brexit preparations covers this area of risk, and whether it knows how much money is currently attracted into Cambridgeshire, that will be lost when access by the UK to ESF funding will cease.
Many thanks, Cllr Dupre: this would certainly be worth bringing to the attention of John Ellworthy, Editor of the Cambridgeshire Times stable of newspapers, if you could give him some firm figures regarding the total loss of ESF funding which would be caused by Brexit ,and the organisations involved,
No doubt he would then go to some of them, and get them to comment on what the loss will mean in terms of activities abandoned, ,improvements brought to an end .etc.