Policy
HRH Duke of Edinburgh, 10 June 1921 to 9 April 2021 Read more
Policy
We will continue to support various community-led regeneration programmes through the Empowering Communities Programme in 2019/2020.
We will provide more information about the projects to be supported by the programme in 2019 to 2020 shortly.
The Empowering Communities Programme comprises two targeted funds:
The Investing in Communities Fund (ICF) is a new streamlined communities fund that is delivered as part of the Empowering Communities Programme. The fund reflects our commitment to investing in communities so that they can develop the resources and resilience to decide their own aspirations, priorities and solutions in response. The fund will support our most disadvantaged or fragile communities, to tackle poverty in all its forms on their own terms.
The fund aims to empower communities enabling them to tackle poverty, inequality and rural disadvantage on their own terms, in turn supporting inclusive growth. The fund promotes a more responsive, community-led, place-based approach. One that is flexible and can adapt to existing and emerging community issues, circumstances and priorities.
This new fund supports a range of activity through a staged funding approach, enabling communities to:
So that they can control more of their own affairs and take forward more of the activities they have identified as being vital to the success of their place.
The fund aims to encourage a more holistic response in tackling poverty, inequality and rural disadvantage. It does this by recognising that such approaches to the design of projects and services, which are informed by lived experience and are person centred, can deliver multiple positive outcomes. The fund will help meet our targets set out in the child poverty delivery plan.
A key component of the new Investing in Communities Fund is the availability of multi-year awards for those that who wish to apply for funding over more than one year, to provide essential stability for community-led activity. This recognises that longer term planning and support are needed to help communities unlock the complex interwoven issues which grip people and communities in poverty, experiencing disadvantage, and inequality. The flexible design of the fund further aims to support communities by reducing the administrative burden of applying to multiple funds.
We expect successful projects to demonstrate the Place Principle, which asks that we take a more joined up collaborative approach to services and assets within a place to achieve better outcomes for people and communities.
The first round of the fund was open to applications from 7 May to 14 June 2019.
All applications were assessed against the funds criteria and those supported following the Independent Assessment Panel meeting on 7 October 2019 can be found here:
The £24.8 million Aspiring Communities Fund will help community bodies and third sector organisations in our most deprived and fragile communities develop and deliver long-term local solutions that:
View a list of projects approved for the Aspiring Communities Fund, updated in February 2019.
The new streamlined Investing in Communities Fund replaces five previous community funds:
Since its launch in 2012, PCF has invested more than £41 million in hundreds of community-led projects that tackle inequality across Scotland.
In 2016 we began support for Participatory Budgeting through our Community Choices Fund.
See a list of Community Choices Fund awards recipients for the following years:
See a list of Making Places Initiative award recipients.
See a list of Fair Food Transformation Fund award recipients.
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