The allocation of funds to voluntary organisations must present the Council with a huge headache each year. With well over 100 groups bidding for the limited cash available and new organisations coming on to the scene all the time, whatever method the authority employs in an attempt to be seen to be fair to them is bound to result in winners and losers.

This year it set up commissioning bodies to deal with the bids with the aim of ending duplication and getting the best value for the £5.6 million of public money which was available for distribution. As a result, some groups might have lost out because others doing similar work have been deemed to be a better investment.

That is a shame for them and for the people who rely on them but it is right that the Council should be prepared to take tough decisions to ensure that resources are spent wisely.

Unfortunately this means that some good groups face a bleak future and may go to the wall - a situation which points to a need for them to have access to other sources of funding. The obvious one is the Lottery, which seems to have no shortage of cash available for controversial projects, some of which stretch the meaning of "good causes" beyond most people's definition of that term.

If these substantial funds were directed instead towards the sort of community groups and projects which annually have to compete for local authority cash to enable them to carry on their good work, there would be far fewer losers.