That the Parliament notes what it sees as the significant cross-party concern at the reported plan by Edinburgh Integration Joint Board (IJB) to scrap its £4.5 million charity grant programme at the end of June 2025, thereby ending funding for all 64 charities that currently deliver services throughout the city with its support; acknowledges a statement by one current grant recipient, Scottish Huntington’s Association, that such charities are “the fence at the top of the cliff that diminish the requirement for emergency support at the bottom”; urges Edinburgh IJB to listen to the argument that abolishing such preventative spending with its charity partners is a false economy, which will ultimately increase costs by driving service users to what it considers is the city’s already overstretched and significantly more expensive statutory sector, including primary care and secondary acute and emergency services, and calls on Edinburgh IJB, Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership, Edinburgh City Council and NHS Lothian to work together with all relevant local and national stakeholders to prevent these reductions from coming to pass, in light of what it believes would be the devastating impact that they would have on the essential charity sector, including the thousands of vulnerable people it supports across the city on a daily basis.
Supported by:
Miles Briggs, Foysol Choudhury, Russell Findlay, Murdo Fraser, Meghan Gallacher, Pam Gosal, Dr. Sandesh Gulhane (Registered interest)
, Craig Hoy, Ash Regan, Douglas Ross, Liz Smith, Annie Wells, Brian Whittle