February 2004
Cydcoed Phase I
28 projects are now physically complete. 9 of the remaining 12 are on track for completion within the next month or so. 1 project is going well but has been extended to June 2004, another has had to be extended beyond the end of March but will still complete in good time. One project looks as if it has failed - disappointing, we will learn the lessons, but an overall success rate of 98% is not bad. We are hard at work getting the information together for technical completion of projects - completion reports and final financial reconciliation. This tends to mean that you are hard at work responding to us. Unfortunately, because the parameters to which we were working were changed as we went along, we have had to collect some of the information retrospectively. This is why, for example, we've had to ask for your help in collecting information on assets, jobs safeguarded, and retention of original documentation. We do our best to minimise the bureaucracy to which you are exposed. Some still gets through, inevitably, and we are sorry for the work this causes you. Please let us know if you can think of any ways that we can make things easier for you. Thank you very much for your hard work. Anyone reading this and worrying about completing a Phase II project should be reassured that now we know all about it, we will be collecting this information as we go along - so it should be easier. We are confident of over-achieving on all our targets apart from "hectares of community woodland created" - the shortfall of this will be added to our Phase II target. The jobs safeguarded output is particularly encouraging. Our target was 30 gross jobs safeguarded. Our achievement so far is 43 jobs safeguarded and 17 created. You can see graphs summarising this achievement on the "Chart Physical Progress" of "Project progress Phase I Cydcoed.xls" attached. At the end of December we were 9.9% behind profile (phew! - we aim to be within 10%) and on course to hit profile as forecast by the end of the programme. We have given £3,598,000 in grants to community groups, £381,000 to go. Nearly all this is for one of the projects with a time extension. Cydcoed Phase II
We have added to this update contacts for those groups at "application in progress" stage or beyond - welcome! 6 applications in progress, 1 project approved awaiting acceptance of contract by the group, 4 projects in progress. We have about 130 potential projects. The projects on our books total £8M out of £12M we have to give in grants - so we would welcome new ideas for potential projects. We are looking good on all physical targets except for: - "hectares of community woodland created" - we have plenty in potential projects but need to bring forward woodland creation projects to applications in progress stage; and - numbers of woods - we need to find potential projects that involve lots of woods or one wood for not very much money. The "Progress Summary" page of ProjectprogressPhaseIICydcoed.xls has charts summarising physical progress. We have committed all our grant for this financial year (up to 31 March 2004) and £700,000 of the £1.5M we have to give in grants to community groups next financial year. We have given £132,300 in grants to community groups. At end December we were 41% behind financial profile but by end March we should be 22% ahead (due to giving lots of grants to community groups) - subject to budget constraints.
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