... I still don't see why its being promoted on Lib Dem paper.
Roz, just to reassure you, the Fund is being promoted primarily through the council's own portals and will hopefully be in the local papers as well.
Cllr Peake and I are providing some extra publicity for this Fund through using our own resources, and by directing visitors to our site they can also see lots of other locally relevant information, like forthcoming planning applications, as well.
Anyway, back to that fair point! The deadline however should be greater than three weeks which is an extraordinarily short time in which voluntary organisations can apply. It takes time to consider and submit bids. I would therefore argue that it is too short and not likely to promote equality of opportunity and therefore the deadline should be extended. I think all of our three councillors need to answer that one.
In an ideal world, we would have had more time for applications, but we were partly constrained by a change in the council's rules relating to when the Fund could be spent, so had to move earlier. Nevertheless, the view of the co-ordinating group - which includes all three councillors (all of whom were present when the decision was made) - is that three weeks is sufficient.