£100,000 available for Teesdale community groups

Teesdale-based groups and organisations are being invited to apply for grants from a windfall £100,000 pot of cash.

The money comes from an allocation that went unspent while the Teesdale Area Action Partnership (TAP) was transformed into a local network over the past year.

The money is on top of another £90,000 that will become available once an “area action plan” has been formulated later this year, as well as a combined £93,500 available through the neighbourhood budgets of Teesdale’s five county councillors. However, some of the councillors’ neighbourhood budgets have already been allocated.

Of the windfall money from Durham County Council, local network co-ordinator Adam White said: “It is last year’s core budget which we didn’t spend while we were setting up the local network.

“Our normal budget used to be £100,000, that was set aside with the review and change. In future years our core budget will be £90,000.”

During September the elected members (county councillors) of the local network are expected to meet after which the area action plan will start to develop.

Mr White added: “In October and November Teesdale’s local network will be carrying out some consultations in each of the wards around the area – big events where we want local people to come to tell us basically what they want to see in their local communities.”

He added that other data, such as input from partners like public health and police and fire services, will also be considered when compiling the area action plan.

The plan will then determine how the network’s core budget is spent.

In the year where the core budget was not spent, Mr White said the county councillors had been proactively spending their neighbourhood budgets to cover the funding gap.

He said: “As has our team, Annalisa Ward (community development officer) especially has supported a number of local initiatives to access external funding.”

These include helping secure Lottery funding for a number of large projects such as St Mary’s Church in Middleton, and The Witham and TCR Hub in Barnard Castle.

The co-ordinator added: “It runs into hundreds of thousands over the last 18 months.”

There are a number of changes to Local Network, including that final approval for funding of projects will be taken solely by the five county councillors, and not a board, as had happened under TAP.

A positive is that the entire budget need not be spent within the financial year. This is also true for the windfall £100,000.

Mr White said: “If we don’t spend this £100,000, we can roll whatever is left into the £90,000 core budget.”

Community groups can apply of grants of between £5,000 and £10,000 from the £100,000 pot.
Projects must meet at least one criterion, which includes community safety, employment, jobs and skills, health and wellbeing, environment and natural spaces, education and training, housing and physical infrastructure or culture, heritage and events.

Applications are open until Wednesday, September 30, to allow schools and organisations to prepare bids after the summer.

For an application pack and more details, email TeesdaleLN@durham.gov.uk