Community Response Fund needed for Christchurch

20 May 2009

The Minister of Social Development and Employment Paula Bennett has announced the Community Response Fund to support community and voluntary sector organisations. This fund will be $40m in the first of its two years.

This comes as the Christchurch City Council is proposing to cut $30m in real terms from its community grants funding over the next ten years in its draft Long Term Council Community Plan.

“The risk is that the City Council uses government intentions to increase funding as a reason to cut its contribution to the valuable work of community organisations”, said Darel Hall Deputy Chair of Christchurch 2021.

“Unfortunately today’s announcement by Minister Bennett may just off-set this Council’s intention to cut Christchurch’s community organisation funding.”

“The Christchurch City Council has agreed it has possibly misled the public over community grants funding and therefore has had to move to an additional Special Consultative Process. I hope the Minister keeps an eye over developments to ensure the net funding available to community organisations increases by her actions.”

“The last thing we need is for Councils to shift a share of their contribution to community organisations onto central government leading to no net positive outcome from the Minister’s announcement today”, said Darel Hall.

ENDS