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Search forJobs are lost after partnership pulls funding
Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 07:00
Emergency meetings are now being held with staff at the Pembroke Estate Management Board Ltd's Repair and Maintenance service.
Three of the project's four workers will be out of a job and a vacant post will not be filled; there will also be a reduction in hours for other admin and management staff at the Pembroke EMB.
The organisation, an acclaimed social enterprise set up in 1994 in Devonport, had asked for cash up to a maximum of £114,307 for the next two years.
Pembroke EMB was today waiting for a written explanation of the decision and therefore unable to comment, but the DRC Partnership's November board meeting raised questions about how many people had found jobs as a result of the project.
The DRC Partnership has funded the project for six years but the current arrangement was due to end on November 30.
Last month, Pembroke EMB's Christine Watts took part in two-hour-long talks with the DRC Partnership about its bid.
The New Deal for Communities organisation, eight years into its decade-long mission to spend £48.73million on regenerating Devonport, had brought in 'external examiner' Oliver Allies from ERS Research and Consultancy to examine the repair and maintenance service.
A report said during the next two years the repair and maintenance project aimed to teach 178 people, particularly the young, the unemployed and those with mental health issues, skills in the fields of building, gardening and maintenance.
The DRC Partnership's board discussed five options including fully funding the project, giving it £53,539 on a gradually declining basis for two years, funding it with £22,327 until next March, or offering it a 'parachute payment' of £39,072 on a declining basis for nine months.
However, board members supported the fifth option: give no money at all.
Resident board member David Brown, who attended the two-hour summit meeting, said: "The consensus seemed to be this was not what we wanted from the project."
Cllr Ted Fry, deputy leader of Plymouth City Council, said the project should have worked out an 'exit strategy' and added: "We could say 'Give it nine months', but given the economic situation I don't think we should; we should say, 'No, it ends here'. In the public interest we should do that."
Vice-chairman Will Blagdon said the DRC Partnership had previously faced many difficult and emotional decisions 'about projects that have not been sustainable and have, regretfully, had to terminate those projects'.
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