Community groups in Heavitree & Whipton Barton have missed out on £14,600 in grants after absentee Labour county councillor Danny Barnes failed to sign their funding agreements before the financial year-end deadline.
Around ten local voluntary organisations in the Heavitree & Whipton Barton electoral division did not receive funding which had been approved in principle under the county council locality budgets community grants scheme.
They include Friends of Heavitree Pleasure Ground, a volunteer group which helps maintain the park and performs litter picks and kerb and drainage clearance in nearby streets, Heavitree Food Larder and Cafe, a food bank based at United Reformed Church in Fore Street, and Friends of Heavitree Health Centre, a charity which supports health centre patients.
All the affected community groups submitted their funding applications before this year’s 14 February deadline and had their applications approved in principle.
But the final sign-off required under the terms of scheme did not take place after county council officers were unable to contact Danny Barnes despite making numerous attempts to do so.
2024-25 Devon County Council locality budget community grants allocations by Exeter councillor.
Source: Devon County Council.
Danny Barnes is conspicuous among all sixty Devon county councillors for having failed to spend all of his 2024-25 locality community grants budget.
No other councillor has come close to this record, with most spending all or almost all of their budgets this year.
Danny Barnes has also persistently underspent his locality community grants budget in every year since he was elected.
In 2021-22 he failed to spend £7,450 of a £10,000 budget, in 2022-23 he failed to spend £5,230 of an £11,725 budget and in 2023-24 he failed to spend £6,600 of a £10,230 budget.
This means, once budget variations and carry-forwards are accounted for, that a total of £18,325 that could have been given in grants to voluntary and community groups in Heavitree & Whipton Barton has now been lost, as a locality budgets reset takes place before next week’s county council elections.
Danny Barnes. Photo: Devon Labour.
Danny Barnes has attended only two of seventeen public county council meetings at which he was expected in the past twelve months, an attendance rate of less than 12%.
Both were public rights of way committee meetings at which none of the business related to Exeter, but the timing of their dates means that the Local Government Act six month rule does not apply.
This provides that councillors who do not attend a meeting of the local authority of which they are a member at least once every six months must vacate their office, triggering a by-election.
As the two meetings he attended took place in July and November he will not breach the six month rule for the rest of his term of office – which ends next Thursday at the local elections – even though he has not attended a county council meeting that is not related to public rights of way for more than fifteen months.
It is not known whether he has claimed the £15,082 county council member’s allowance to which he is entitled this year.
