Decision details

To allocate community pride grants as follows:

2016 was the eleventh year of the council’s community pride scheme which has allocated just over £430,000 to match-fund over 250 community-based projects that have improved and enhanced the public realm.

The focus of the scheme has remained resolutely on the public environment but more recent rounds have seen an added emphasis on promoting sustainability and on building-up community ownership over the environment.

For 2016-17 round, Cabinet were clear that the funding should once again be made available to support neighbourhood-based projects that will build up community pride and enable local groups to be more influential in supporting their communities and improving their neighbourhoods. This year we had two pots of funding:

• Up to £30,000 was made available via community pride grants to match-fund community-led projects, up to the value of £5,000.
• Up to £4,000 was also made available via community-building grants to community and voluntary sector groups to run small-scale projects, events and activities to help them support the well-being of their neighbourhood up to the value of £300.

The grant schemes went live from Friday 18 March 2016 and were publicised through Gloucestershire Rural Community Council, media releases and information on the council’s website. The closing date was Friday 17th June 2016 which gave applicants an 8 week period to submit applications.

A panel comprising the Cabinet Member Healthy Lifestyles, Angela Gilbert from Gloucestershire Rural Community Council, Helen Down, and Richard Gibson, from the Commissioning Division met on 14 July to assess the 27 community pride applications and make recommendations to the Leader of the Council.

Reasons for recommendations

Due to the large numbers of community pride applications received this year, which collectively were requesting just over £87,000 (against a total available of £30,000), the assessment panel carried out an assessment of the applications to assess the degree to which the applications met the criteria of this year’s community pride fund:

• Was the application from a community-based organisation?
• Was the project of a permanent nature?
• Was the project accessible at no-cost?
• Would the project create a lasting legacy?
• Was the project neighbourhood based?
• Would the project meet a defined community need
• What the community pride funding achieve
• How would the applicant measure success
• What was the ratio of funding requested to match funding

The panel identified 16 community pride projects that could definitely answer in the positive for the majority of the criteria and agreed that they should be recommended for approval. The total sum awarded through this process totalled £24,291.

The panel also identified 3 community pride projects that were proposing community-based environmental projects in the West of Cheltenham. The collective request was for £9,474. The panel suggested that a pot of £5,000 be allocated to the three organisations to work collaboratively with Hesters Way Partnership to deliver an over-arching project.

The assessment of the projects is shown in appendix 2.

In terms of the community building grants, 10 requests were received and it is recommended that all 10 projects are funded at a total cost of £2,990. These are listed in appendix 3.

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