FOI - Grants made for Croydon's 2023 London Borough of Culture programme [Oct 2023]

Your request 

You very kindly answered my recent Freedom of Information request, in which you advised:

“Croydon Council and GLA officers meet on a regular basis throughout the development and delivery stages of the programme, to ensure the project milestones are achieved and conditions are met, with evidence provided with each grant claim form.”

I therefore have further questions for you.

1. Please provide the dates of all of the meetings referred to in your previous response (both those that have already been held and, the dates of future scheduled meetings).
2. Please provide a full list of attendees, and who they are representing (where applicable)
3. Please provide the minutes of all previous Borough of Culture "milestone" meetings.

Our response

1. Regular informal meetings between GLA and Croydon Council officers have taken place since January 2022 to support the development and delivery of Croydon’s year as London Borough of Culture. These moved from monthly to fortnightly in September 2022. These meetings cover all operational aspects of the programme. GLA officers also attend the Croydon Steering Group monthly meetings. These started in May 2022. Additionally, a Strategic Programme Board, led by Croydon Council with representation from funding partners, was set up in February 2023, to oversee and support the programme. This Board meets on a six-weekly basis, and there have been three meetings to date. Future dates are as follows: 19 Sept, 17 Oct, 20 Nov and 15 Dec (2023). Please find attached the meeting minutes which are dated. A further meeting occurred in February 2023, but the GLA does not hold minutes for this.
2. The regular fortnightly meetings are attended by the Principal Policy Officer and Senior Policy Officer in the GLA Culture and Creative Industries Unit and from Croydon, the Interim Director of Culture and Community Safety, Head of Culture, Libraries and Leisure and Strategic Creative Programme lead. The Strategic Programme Board and Croydon Steering Group are led and chaired by Croydon Council and the cultural sector partners respectively, and these hold the full list of attendees and who they are representing and are attached to this response. Please note that some names and job roles of members of staff are exempt from disclosure under s.40 (Personal information) of the Freedom of Information Act. This information could potentially identify specific employees and as such constitutes as personal data which is defined by Article 4(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable living individual. It is considered that disclosure of this information would contravene the first data protection principle under Article 5(1) of GDPR which states that Personal data must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.
3. Please find attached the meeting minutes, which are also dated. A further meeting occurred in February 2023, but the GLA does not hold minutes for this. Please note that some of the content is exempt from disclosure under the exemption for Commercial Interests at section 43(2) of the FOIA.