Author: Burgh Angel

Having publicised their situation throughout and beyond Glasgow, Hamiltonhill Action Group have now gained the support of the Scottish Tenants Organisation as well as neighbouring estates giving further signs of solidarity and support. The Action Group are holding a weekly stall immediately outside GHA headquarters and have made contact with several other resident’s groups in Glasgow. There have also been a large number of unaffiliated social housing residents coming up to the stall to share stories and generally showing GHA that Glasgow is supporting the campaign for better social housing, whether it is in Possil, Parkhead or Pollokshields.

Since putting in a formal request to GHA for a timetable of works to install Secured By Design steel security doors in Hamiltonhill, the Hamiltonhill Action Group have now escalated the campaign, since GHA have chosen to completely ignore both the request and complaint logged by the residents via the Action Group.

Over a month has passed since the Action Group registered their official request but GHA has been deathly silent despite follow up correspondence from the Group and residents. Even according to their own agenda and targets of responding to resident’s requests and correspondence the GHA have failed. Considering a colossal 50% of the budget is spent on administration, surely it can’t be an issue of not having enough people to answer the phones?!

GHA have shown themselves to be unconcerned for their tenants health and safety, consistently ignoring demands for investment to be made to improve the quality of social housing in the area. However, Hamiltonhill has been subject to a systematic programme of neglect by GHA and Glasgow City Council, prior to it being earmarked for demolition in 2008 and as a local resident said:-

“We have stayed here 9 years, and our door always opens when you press the service button, at any time. They don’t think there is anything wrong with that.”

Having publicised their situation throughout and beyond Glasgow, Hamiltonhill Action Group have now gained the support of the Scottish Tenants Organisation as well as neighbouring estates giving further signs of solidarity and support. The Action Group are holding a weekly stall immediately outside GHA headquarters and have made contact with several other resident’s groups in Glasgow. There have also been a large number of unaffiliated social housing residents coming up to the stall to share stories and generally showing GHA that Glasgow is supporting the campaign for better social housing, whether it is in Possil, Parkhead or Pollokshields.

The two groups have called a national demonstration on the 24th of September in Glasgow to show that the people of Scotland want and are in need of safe, secure, dry and affordable social housing and demand respect for their communities and themselves from the people who are meant to be working for them.

CREDIT unions have attacked government levies that are to be used to help fund the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Tom Kelly, treasurer of Johnstone Credit Union, said the UK-wide policy, designed to re-pay the UK Government for the money it gave to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) as a result of the failure of five UK banks, is unfair.
The levies are to be collected from banks, building societies and credit unions, even though credit unions are not responsible for the financial crisis that hit the UK last year.

Kelly said: “The imposition of this levy on credit unions, is a perfect illustration of the damage being inflicted on communities throughout the UK by what Lord Turner of the Financial Services Authority describes as the ‘socially useless’ innovations of the mainstream banking sector.

“It is incredible that small voluntary organisations should be expected to pay for the misdemeanours of these socially irresponsible banks. The banking sector should be asked to relieve credit unions of this burden.”

Dr Bill Wilson, SNP MSP for the West of Scotland, has backed Kelly’s criticism of the move.

“It is unjust that these small organisations that have been lending responsibly should be penalised by the Financial Services Authority due to the failures of the big banks,” said Wilson.

“Credit unions have worthy social aims in that they generally operate on a non profit making basis, employ volunteers and extend finance at reasonable rates to those who would otherwise struggle. They should not be punished by the unsustainable business practices of the major banks.”

The £30m Community Assets programme has funded 38 projects across England, enabling local authority buildings to be renovated and transferred to community organizations.

The Community Assets fund, a £30 million programme was established to transfer public buildings to local organisations, Community Assets offered grants of between £150,000 and £1 million to refurbish local authority buildings, ensuring they were appropriate for transfer to the third sector. The programme was funded by the Office of the Third Sector and delivered by the Big Lottery Fund.

The programme was aimed at strengthening third sector organisations, to enable them to more imaginative in providing services to their communities; and benefit local people, who will be able to use high quality spaces for community activities.

Phil Hope, the Minister for the Third Sector, said:

“Community Assets is about bringing people together and giving communities control over their own affairs, not simply painting buildings and fixing roofs. Taking on ownership of an asset will help third sector organisations to develop a base of independence and sustainability, which will enable them to grow and respond better to the needs of local people.”

In advance of the Fund starting for business, the Government consulted on how Community Assets should work. A summary of the consultation and the Government’s response can be found in the consultations section of the website.

An example of the impact of the Community Assets Fund is Birtley Community Hub which opened its doors last week, the first project to completed with a grant from the scheme.

The Birtley Project, based in Tyne and Wear, received £166,755 from the scheme to help convert the town’s library into a new centre for community use.

The new hub will provide office space for charities and community groups, meeting rooms, an ICT training suite and a café.

Birtley Community Hub project leader Ian Caddy said: ‘This could not have come at a better time for Birtley – we will be able to deliver help, support and hope not only to the local community and businesses but also to the surrounding area.’

The Cestra Credit Union, Northumbria Police, Citizens Advice Bureau and the North East Council of Addictions are leasing space in the building.

The Pilot Programme

We are currently inviting community organisations with an interest in running a Community Allowance pilot for people on Employment and Support Allowance and Incapacity Benefit to send us a proposal by 1st October 2009.

Right to Bid

Last year, the Government announced that it was creating a Right to Bid scheme that would enable any organisation to propose to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) a new way of delivering any of its services.

We thought this was a good opportunity to work with the DWP to pilot the Community Allowance. We developed a Right to Bid proposal for a £2.2 million pilot programme in 15 areas across the UK.

You can read the detail of what we wanted to achieve in our Right to Bid proposal that we sent to DWP in January 2009.

In April 2009 they asked us a number of questions about our proposal, you can read our answers here.

In July 2009 they called us to a meeting where they informed us that the Right to Bid process was looking for much smaller scale pilots. They also said that the outgoing Secretary of State, James Purnell MP, had made it clear that the Community Allowance could not be piloted for people on Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance.

They rejected our bid but asked us to submit another proposal for a smaller scale pilot operating in 3 areas anywhere in the UK. They also said our bid would stand a greater chance of success if we restricted the people who could participate to those who are on Incapacity Benefit and Employment and Support Allowance.

We asked all the organisations that had already expressed an interest in piloting the Community Allowance if they would be prepared to go ahead on that basis and over 30 organisations said they would.

Aims of pilots:

• To test the feasibility and impact of the Community Allowance on participants and their communities in a range of settings across the UK
• To capture learning and evidence that could inform further development of the Community Allowance to people on other benefits (e.g. Income Support and Job Seekers Allowance)

Want to be involved in the pilot programme?

We are looking for community organisations from across the UK that are interested in becoming a partner with CREATE in order to run the Community Allowance. We would like to work with organisations that are:

• Local community based charity, social enterprise or community interest company
• Trusted locally, with a track record of working with ‘hard to reach’ people
• Capacity and skills to support the Community Allowance participants
• Ability to generate local paid work (e.g. community research or youth work) or identify and place people in paid work that strengthens their neighbourhood (e.g. School Crossing Patrol)

We’d like these pilots to be in a range of rural and urban areas. In each area we anticipate identifying and working with one or more partners, each of whom would recruit, employ and support people. We have estimated that in each area the Community Allowance could create around 80 part time jobs.

If you wish to develop a proposal for how your organisation would deliver a Community Allowance pilot programme in your area, please download this proposal form and guidance notes. Completed forms need to be back to the CREATE Consortium by 5pm on 1st October 2009.

Type of Jobs: Eligible jobs on the Community Allowance would be restricted to those that contribute to strengthening the neighbourhood. This would be defined and refined by the CREATE Consortium over the duration of the pilots through dialogue with the CREATE partners.

Real Time Evaluation: The CREATE Consortium will contract with an independent evaluator to carry out a real time evaluation of the pilot programme.

Author: Calum Macleod and Nicole Busby, The Scotsman

CREATION of a legislative and public funding framework to enable the transfer of land into community ownership in Scotland is arguably the defining achievement of the first decade of devolution.
The “community right to buy” provisions contained in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, coupled with financial support from the Scottish Land Fund and, latterly, the Growing Community Assets Fund, have given rural communities the means and confidence to purchase the land they inhabit, thereby securing control of the prime asset with which to shape their futures.

In the Western Isles, no stranger to ill- conceived, supersized development “opportunities” – of which a proposed superquarry was surely the most misguided – the North Harris Trust is a notable example of the economic, environmental and social benefits that can flow from collective ownership of land.

It is scarcely alone in that regard.

By the time of its demise in 2006, the Scottish Land Fund had distributed a total of £13.9 million to 188 rural communities.

This amount included a grant of £3.5m to help the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust – headed by Willie McSporran – to purchase its island in 2001 and £1.5m to help the Assynt Foundation buy the Glencanisp and Drumrunie estates in Sutherland and Ross-shire.

Yet much of the impetus that enabled community land ownership to make such impressive strides over the past decade is threatening to drain away as the financial tap of public funds is gradually turned off.

The omens were not encouraging when the Big Lottery’s Growing Community Assets Fund failed to ring-fence money for land purchase.

Last October’s announcement that the fund was to close, when the remaining £15m of its original £50m pot was allocated, confirmed that community land ownership was slipping down the political agenda.

Of course, sceptics may argue that none of this matters a great deal.

There are grumblings in some quarters that the community land movement has largely been the preserve of the Highlands and Islands with comparatively little investment in lowland Scotland.

Others argue that, in a climate of economic uncertainty, the financial case for supporting community buy-outs cannot be reconciled with other competing demands on the public purse.

All of which rather misses the point. The current international direction of travel in rural policy is towards ensuring the sustainability of local communities within the framework of what the OECD somewhat grandly calls “the new rural paradigm”.

What this boils down to is an approach to rural development in which competitiveness is driven by local assets and resources; broadly based rural economies; investment rather than subsidy; and the involvement of local stakeholders.

The OECD’s approach is one that the Scottish Government, with some justification, can claim to be already informing aspects of what still remains a frustratingly disconnected rural development strategy for Scotland.

Key proposals contained in the draft crofting reform bill, for example, are aimed squarely at empowering communities to take decisions at the local level.

And a constant refrain from government concerns the need to utilise Scotland’s natural resources to simultaneously promote the green agenda and generate sustainable economic growth.

So, it’s particularly surprising that a Scottish Government that appears to talk the language of community empowerment and sustainability hasn’t yet seen fit to safeguard dedicated funding for future community land buyouts.

Indeed, if anything, significant cuts to the budget of Highlands and Islands Enterprise in particular, do little to instil confidence that an imminent funding black hole is likely to be plugged any time soon.

Community land ownership doesn’t offer a “one-size fits all” antidote to the economic and social disparities that continue to bedevil rural Scotland.

And there is an important seam of longer term research to be mined regarding the contribution of “buy-outs” to the sustainability of communities in which they occur.

Yet what does seem clear, even at this stage, is that the Scottish Land Fund, (and to a lesser degree, the Growing Community Assets Fund) was instrumental in giving a succession of rural communities a shot at determining their own destinies. They did this by helping local communities in Scotland turn local assets and resources to their collective advantage.

There is a clear and compelling argument for re-establishing a Scottish Land Fund given the appetite that still exists among rural communities to take responsibility for the land they inhabit.

Amid the stampede to pull Scotland out of the current economic downturn, the Scottish Government would do well to ensure that the benefits of community ownership are safeguarded rather than trampled underfoot.

• Dr Calum Macleod is senior research fellow at the UHI Centre for Remote and Rural Studies in Inverness.

• Dr Nicole Busby is senior lecturer in law at the University of Stirling.

A response to Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment Action Plan

Introduction

1.  Local People  Leading – the informal alliance of national and regional networks, local community groups and individuals that has come together to campaign for a strong and independent community sector in Scotland – welcomed the Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment Action Plan as an important step on the road to greater community empowerment in Scotland.  But it is not sufficiently radical or ambitious to achieve significant change.  There are six key areas where further action is needed.

Recognising the community sector

2.  The Action Plan and government policy more widely, does not recognise the existence of the community sector as a distinct part of the Third Sector.  It has distinct characteristics: as well as formally constituted, community owned and led organisations, the sector is comprised of many more informal, smaller, more volunteer based organisations.  Much of this activity happens beneath the radar of government and yet produces the vital social capital which provides so much of the foundation and energy for local civic action and empowerment.  Not surprisingly these groups have distinctive needs for support, advice, funding, and engagement if they are to thrive and develop.

3.  LPL contends that the Scottish Government should develop a separate and distinctive strategy for the community sector which recognises this – as it has for social enterprises.  This strategy would set out the role and importance of the community sector, the support it requires nationally and locally and a plan for government to support its development.  Key elements of that strategy are identified below.

An independent and influential community sector

4.  Effective community empowerment will only be achieved when local community organisations achieve genuine independence and strength, take on local leadership and power through double devolution and are influential in local engagement processes such as Community Planning Partnerships. The involvement of community groups in community planning however effectively that is done – and much more action is required to make it effective – is no substitute for true community empowerment: local people coming together with the capacity to do things for themselves either independently or, if they choose, in partnership with others.

5.  Community anchors – locally owned community organisations which support and provide leadership for other community organisations – are vital to achieve an independent and influential local community sector.  The Action Plan recognises that anchors are a critical characteristic of empowered communities but contains no policy or action to support and develop them.  LPL believes this is a fundamental weakness of the Plan. The Scottish Government should introduce a programme of work to highlight the importance of community anchors and to support their development financially and organisationally.

Community assets and enterprise

6.   More often than not, at the heart of an empowered community is a community owned asset providing not only an independent, locally controlled income stream but also the confidence and energy which goes alongside a successful community enterprise.  In recent years, the policy climate has cooled towards the community ownership of assets but despite this, several models have been shown to be highly effective and offer opportunities for expansion. 

7.  The Action Plan and the subsequent grant to DTA Scotland for a programme to promote asset transfer to communities is a welcome development.  The crucial further element which needs urgent attention is the financial and organisational support available to community groups which wish to acquire and manage assets. There is much to be learned from effective practice in this regard elsewhere in the UK, including the operation of the Adventure Capital Fund in England.

8. A comprehensive review by government of progress in relation to community asset ownership, including proper scrutiny of the existing Land Reform legislation, is urgently required in order to reinvigorate this agenda.

Supporting the community sector

9.  Community empowerment cannot be given or provided by external agencies but communities can be helped to become empowered by community development work, often called community capacity building.  However, at the moment communities have no access to independent community capacity building resources.  The limited support that does exist is within the CLD departments of councils and these are geared to the priorities of the local authority.  The Action Plan – although it recognises the importance of community capacity building and proposes some high-level work to improve its effectiveness – does not address this fundamental issue. LPL believes that communities must have access to and control of community capacity building resources which are independent of government. 

Revitalising democracy

10.  Re-engaging citizens with local and national government is essential if our democracy is to be re-vitalised.  New ways need to be found to engage people locally with government and local issues.  However, the Action Plan has little to say about the link between community empowerment and democratic renewal and proposes only a modest albeit welcome pilot initiative in participatory budgeting. 

11.  This is a huge missed opportunity to link community empowerment and democratic revival. Double devolution – the devolution of leadership and power beyond local authorities- must be pursued energetically as part of the programme to increase community empowerment. Community Councils will have a role to play in this.  There are also opportunities to expand the current role of elected and selected citizen representatives across a range of civic institutions and community calls for action, already being piloted by some councils, must also be developed and extended.  But the most potent opportunity lies in the delegated management and budgets for local services and LPL recommends that a programme of pilot projects should be developed with a view to introducing a national policy for delegated local services.

Communities and sustainable development

12.  Empowered communities will be at the heart of successful policies to tackle global climate change and achieve environmental justice and there is a growing imperative to refocus on local action and solutions.  There is a growing wealth of experience of communities coming together to take action on climate change in a wide variety of ways including the control and ownership of renewable energy production.  This experience needs to be captured and extended much more widely in both urban and rural areas.

Conclusion

13.  The Community Empowerment Action Plan is part of the journey towards more community empowerment in Scotland.  These recommendations will take that journey further and faster which is essential if the economic, social and environmental issues facing Scotland’s communities are to be dealt with effectively.

Aug 09

Douglas Peacock, chair of the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign, and Karen Chung, treasurer, today appeared before a packed Glasgow Sheriff Court to respond to an interim interdict sought by Glasgow City Council. The Council objects to local residents cleaning up the North Kelvin Meadow and making it safe. The Meadow, which is on the site of the former Clouston Steet Playing fields in Maryhill, has never been built on, and the Council has left it derelict more than two decades ahead of a possible sale to a property developer.

Douglas Peacock, chair of the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign, and Karen Chung, treasurer, today appeared before a packed Glasgow Sheriff Court to respond to an interim interdict sought by Glasgow City Council. The Council objects to local residents cleaning up the North Kelvin Meadow and making it safe. The Meadow, which is on the site of the former Clouston Steet Playing fields in Maryhill, has never been built on, and the Council has left it derelict more than two decades ahead of a possible sale to a property developer.

The Sheriff ruled today that the two named individuals, and they alone, should be prevented from installing bat boxes or additional raised beds for vegetables. Mr Peacock and Ms Chung are free to tend their existing gardens, and other local residents may still go ahead with bat boxes and other projects as planned.

Douglas Peacock of the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign said: “We have spent almost a year writing to representatives of the City Council, and they haven’t even agreed to meet us or, in my cases, written back to us. Their interests and ours should be the same – we want a safe environment to live in, we want this space to be maintained, and yet today in a court of law is the first time they have even been in the same room as us.

He added: “The Council claims there was consultation on the planned residential development on the Meadow, and that residents chose the development the Council favours, but in fact there was no real choice. Residents were presented with four broadly similar proposals, all residential. They chose the ‘least worst’. Now they HAVE chosen what they really want. They have voted with their feet – and their trowels – and chosen a green space.”

Green MSP for Glasgow Patrick Harvie said: “The Sheriff today declared in court that the community group here have ‘done nothing but good’, and I could not agree more. A plot of wasteland and a magnet for criminal behaviour has become a gorgeous space for kids to play in and for local people to grow food. It was standing room only today, and there could be no better illustration of strength of opposition to the Council’s position.

“The decision to take members of the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign to court breaches the Council’s own policies on derelict land, wastes local taxpayers’  money, and the injunction they’ve asked for is petty and unjustified. It’s not too late for Glasgow City Council to see sense and start supporting this project.”

Glasgow City Council recently approved a policy supporting this kind of derelict land. The motion passed last year states: City Plan 2 encourages the use of vacant and derelict land as temporary greenspace. Council […] resolves to work with site and property owners to temporarily use vacant land for energy crop production and failing that to landscape vacant sites to create simple, but well maintained grassed areas open to the public.

The North Kelvin Meadow Campaign also has the support of Glasgow Region MSPs Bob Doris, Robert Brown and Bill Kidd, as well as Canal Ward councillors Billy McAllister and Kieran Wild. A petition protesting at GCC s decision to sell the land has attracted over 600 signatures.

web: www.northkelvinmeadow.com

Author: Stephen Maxwell, TfN

From sub prime crisis to credit crunch to global financial meltdown to economic recession to the beginning of global recovery. All in two years.

The speed at which a financial crisis advertised as the most severe since the 1930s has apparently moved through its cycle is breathtaking. Champions of the existing system – and these include virtually all developed country governments concede that the after effects of the crisis, particularly high unemployment and its long tail of social consequences, will persist. But they claim that their emergency actions have averted the danger of a long haul depression on the scale of the 1930s, and look forward to a resumption of business more or less as usual.

For the defenders of the system an additional advantage of the speed at which the cycle has turned is that the critics have not had time to develop a persuasive alternative let alone promote it to the wider public. Apart from calls for curbs on bankers’ bonuses, proposals for the separation of retail and wholesale banking, customer representation on bank boards, and the creation of a publicly owned banking sector through the outright nationalisation of RBS and Lloyds, have failed to gain a hearing beyond the pages of the Guardian or the Opinion supplement of The Sunday Herald. More radical proposals, such as for the development of a community banking alternative to the commercial sector, have failed to reach much beyond the columns of the minority radical magazines.

Civil society is fully implicated in this failure. For the past decade or more third sector zealots have been talking up civil society in general and the voluntary sector in particular as the vehicle of a new wave of social mobilisation inspired by a shining vision of an empowered democracy of active citizens. But the global crisis has found civil society so far lacking a distinctive organised voice. As the sceptics predicted it has continued to speak with the many voices of its organisational diversity, perhaps the only common feature a tone of increased desperation at the social costs of the existing system.

But Scottish civil society has an opportunity to contribute to the so far exiguous Scottish debate. (The reasons for the poverty of Scottish debate lie too deep in Scotland’s institutional deficits to be excavated here). The parliament’s economy committee is carrying out an inquiry into the impact of the global financial crisis on Scotland and how the country should respond. Its invitation for submissions is no doubt aimed primarily at Scotland’s financial and business community, but despite some tendentious questions – for example “how can we ensure that Scotland’s financial sector retains a global perspective and does not retreat into a purely localised lending regime?” The committee’s agenda provides plenty of scope for alternative perspectives from the third sector.

The range of groups with a locus to respond is wide – anti-poverty groups, urban and rural regeneration groups, financial mutuals including credit unions, housing organisations and campaigning groups, social enterprises, charity banks, groups supporting unemployed and other economically vulnerable people. Indeed any organisation whose members are feeling the impact of the economic recession triggered by the failures of key UK and Scottish financial institutions and of the UK regulatory system charged with securing their stability could respond.

Ideally, interested organisations should collaborate in developing their responses but a 11 September deadline precludes that.

So here’s an entirely personal template for voluntary sector submissions: the role of the existing

financial sector in creating and sustaining gross inequalities; the human and economic costs of such inequalities; the need to create a Scottish financial system which serves the urgent social and environmental as well as economic needs of Scotland; the underdevelopment throughout the UK of the mutual and community based financial sector compared to other developed economies including the US and Canada; the need for a UK and Scottish strategy to redress that underdevelopment; the role of a not for profit financial institutions; the failure of the UK regulatory system to protect the established Scottish mutual sector and the stability of other key institutions; a Scottish say in the regulation of a reformed Scottish financial sector.

Author: Third Sector

Kilfinan Community Forest Company – a tale of frustration

Background

The Kilfinan project began in 2005 following extensive community consultations, which revealed that a lack of affordable housing, jobs, and economically active residents were key issues threatening the future of the community.  It was also identified that if the community were able to acquire an area of forest adjoining the village that this could be a solution to these issues.  

In 2007, a group of residents representing most corners of the parish were voted in by the Kilfinan community to establish the Kilfinan Community Forest Company (KCFC) as a registered Scottish Charity. In 2008 a feasibility study looked at what benefits and opportunities the forest could actually bring to the community and the results were encouraging  Two local people were employed to raise awareness of this dynamic project and the plans to revitalise the Kilfinan Parish community.  There are now over 150 members of the company

The group (KCFC)  has continued to be very active over the last 4 years and successfully applied to National Forest land Scheme to buy the area of forest that had been identified  behind our village.  The biggest problem they faced has been the lack of central or public support/funding for community based asset acquisitions and management.  The closure of the Scottish Land Fund has meant that the only route for the community was to apply to the BIG Lottery’s Growing Community Assets fund.    

For nearly 6 months the community worked up its application with their case officer from the Lottery.  The Lottery were somewhat wary about community-managed housing initiatives such as woodland crofts or any leaseholds being established but they were supportive and encouraging.  The Lottery also wanted them to demonstrate that they had sought a reduction in the market value of the forest – which they did.    It was not enough.  After months of hard work and being encouraged to believe that their application was going to be successful, the Lottery rejected their application on the grounds it didn’t ‘fit’ their criteria and desired outcomes and that the project was not good value of public money.     They have since tried other public funders with similar results and with the NFLS application window closing in January 2010 the community have had to find another way forward. 

They are now pursuing a phased acquisition where they purchase a smaller area (125ha) with private funding raised by the community themselves by January 2010.  They then have 5 years to find the rest of the funding or a solution for the remaining area.   They have actively lobbied their national and local politicians on these issues and feel that either appropriate funding support should be made available or that the areas of the National Forest Estate should be transferred or gifted to properly constituted community groups to manage for themselves and the wider community benefit.
 
This forest, under community management, will unlock the potential to deliver:
 
• Local firewood delivery and woodchip supplies
• Sawn timber supplies
• Timber products such as kennels, garden furniture
• Waymarked footpaths with picnic areas and stunning viewpoints
• Mountain bike trails and an adventure playground
• Access to beautiful mid-Atlantic oakwoods, lochans and open hill home to red squirrel, golden eagle, black grouse and red deer
• Ecoburials in a sacred grove
• Pet ecoburials
• Skills development, training and employment opportunities
• Local produce from allotments and crofts
• Forest education and forest school
• Forest crofts and small business enterprises
• Rejuvenate the native oakwood, creating habitats for wildlife and people

In the community’s view and in the view of everyone they have spoken to, this project is a win – win for all parties and they cannot understand why they are being thwarted at every turn in their pursuit of funding.

Author: Third Sector

Government scheme attracts 900 queries ahead of September opening date

More than 900 voluntary organisations have submitted expressions of interest in applying for funding from Communitybuilders, the £70m government scheme that opens for applications on 7 September.

Communitybuilders is a £70m investment fund which takes forward a commitment within the Govt’s white paper – Communities in Control : Real People , Real Power to build more cohesive, empowered and active communities.

Communitybuilders will invest in the sustainability of multi-purpose, inclusive, community-led organisations (sometimes known as Community Anchors). These organisations can be the platform to support empowered communities by:
• providing a place for community activities to take place
• providing and running local services
• stimulating community involvement and enterprise
• generating independent sources of income

Successful applicants should be able to demonstrate that their ideas “make a real and lasting difference to their local communities”.

Sixty per cent of awards from the fund will be loans, and the remainder will be grants.

Not-for-profit groups can apply for loans of between £50,000 and £2m over 10 years. They will pay 5 per cent interest for the first three years before rates are reviewed. Organisations can also apply for grants of between £2,000 and £75,000.

“We hope to start making decisions on some of the smaller funding applications by the end of September, but larger investments requiring greater due diligence will probably take until early October,” said Caroline Forster, deputy chief executive of the Adventure Capital Fund, which is managing Communitybuilders.

http://www.communitybuildersfund.org.uk/