The charity Action for Sustainable Living has announced its first year of shrinkage.  At its Annual General Meeting last nights, its chair Chris Wright announced that “2013 was the first year in which AfSL received no new grant or contract for community or schools work from any Greater Manchester local authority.”  As a consequence, they are moving out of their current offices at the end of the month, and in negotiations for an alternate city centre location.
Presumably this will be a smaller one.  In response to questions from MCFly, Mr Wright and fellow head-honcho-type Gabby Porter explained that staffing levels would be three part-time people “getting to one full-time equivalent.”  They were not able to say which days someone who phoned in order to get involved would speak to a human, with that information going on the website soon.   Asked about when AfSL would know if it indeed has been successful in accessing grants about which he spoke with cautious optimism, Mr Wright said “it could be as soon as the end of February, it could be longer.”

All this completely undermines the speculation for which MCFly was mildly chastised back in November.

Here’s the audio of a brief interview with Chris Wright

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More – on the fantastic food (well, duh, the event was catered by Didsbury Dinners) and the excellent but curiously incomplete speech by Executive Member for the Environment Cllr Kate Chappell – to follow.