Three days before the 251st Govan Fair – the oldest Fair in Europe – it was on the verge of being cancelled because there was no money to pay for it.

The Govan Fair Association, which organises the annual procession, applied for £12,500 from the Govan & Craigton Community Planning Partnership on 20 March. But this was rejected by the Partnership in April.

At the last minute, Glasgow South West Regeneration Agency (GSWRA) – which used to be Govan Initiative – managed to find £5,000 for the Fair to go ahead on Friday 1 June.

Said Jim Gardner, Team Leader of the Social Economy Team at GSWRA, ‘We helped the Association fill in the form and submit an application. We don’t know why it was refused.’

Craigton Councillor, Alistair Watson was the person who fast-tracked the emergency funding through his new role as Chairman of Glasgow South West Regeneration Company. He told the LOCAL NEWS, ‘The reason it was rejected was because they had applied to the Govan and Craigton Community Planning Partnership without reference to the criterea that applied. They should have applied to the Glasgow City Council’s Area Committee timeously – i.e. last year! March was far too late for an event in June especially with an election
in May.’

He advised that the Fair Committee should set up a sub committee and apply now for next year.

Kenny Kerr, Vice Chairperson of the Fair said, ‘I suppose we could have put in our application a lot sooner. We did submit it with the help of GSWRA and we have to go through them to submit any funding application.’

 A spokesman for Glasgow Community Planning’s South West area said, ‘We gave their funding application very careful consideration, but the reality was GCP Limited had requests from 46 local groups for financial assistance of around £1.3 million! The Govan and Craigton area had a budget of £269,594 to help fund local groups and organisations through applying agreed local priorities.’ Number 14 on the list of priorities was ‘providing cultural events and festivals.’