Councillors provided with funding distributing to charities
Case reference FOI2026/01935
Received 11 August 2026
Published 4 September 2026
Request
I am requesting the following information under the Freedom of Information Act.
1. Does the council operate funding schemes whereby individual councillors are provided with funding that they can distribute to charities and other organisations at their discretion? These schemes have different names in different areas, such as “member budgets”, “ward budgets”, “locality budgets” etc.
If the council is uncertain of whether a particular funding scheme fits this criteria, please check with me.
If the answer to question 1 is “no”, the council need not respond to the rest of this FOI request.
If the answer to question 1 is “yes”, please proceed with the remainder of this request.
2. For each year since 2024/25 (including 2026/27 year to date), please list each councillor, their political party/grouping that year, their ward, their annual budget under the scheme(s), and the list of entities they chose to distribute funding to under the scheme(s) covered by question 1. For each recipient entity, please state:
a. The name of the recipient entity (e.g. the name of the charity)
b. The amount of funding
c. What the funding was for (if recorded)
Response
I am requesting the following information under the Freedom of Information Act.
1. Does the council operate funding schemes whereby individual councillors are provided with funding that they can distribute to charities and other organisations at their discretion? These schemes have different names in different areas, such as “member budgets”, “ward budgets”, “locality budgets” etc.
If the council is uncertain of whether a particular funding scheme fits this criteria, please check with me.
Answer: Yes. This information is publically available on our council website and can be viewed via the following link:
https://councillors.herefordshire.gov.uk/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?Id=11098
As such we consider this information to be exempt under Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 because it is reasonably accessible to you via other means. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
If the answer to question 1 is “no”, the council need not respond to the rest of this FOI request.
If the answer to question 1 is “yes”, please proceed with the remainder of this request.
2. For each year since 2024/25 (including 2026/27 year to date), please list each councillor, their political party/grouping that year, their ward, their annual budget under the scheme(s), and the list of entities they chose to distribute funding to under the scheme(s) covered by question 1. For each recipient entity, please state:
a. The name of the recipient entity (e.g. the name of the charity)
b. The amount of funding
c. What the funding was for (if recorded)
Answer: The Service Area have advised this scheme has only been open since 1st April 2026. Spend to date can be viewed in the attached FOI2026 01935 - Ward Member Grant Table.
Please note, there are additional proposals that are not included in the table – this is because the members have not finalised their planned spend. The council proposes to produce an annual report on the total amount of spend per councillor in May 2027.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.