CF selects delegated fund partners

back to the contents page

Make sure you receive your fair share of lottery cash - take out a no-obligation trial subscription today.

The Community Fund has given the go-ahead to its first two experiments in delegated funding, awarding contracts to a private-sector employment services agency and the statutory sector Legal Services Commission.

Action for Employment, better known as A4E, will run a year-long £1m pilot scheme in Bolton (a Fair Share area), aimed specifically at increasing the uptake of lottery funds by black and minority ethnic groups. The company, which runs several government employment and training contracts, offers services mainly to the public sector, including local authorities, schools and job centres. Roy Newey, chief executive of A4E Consult, accepted that the company did not have extensive BME experience, but had a track record in challenging environments: ‘We’re really good at targeting hard-to-reach groups.’ The scheme, he said, would be mainly but not exclusively for capacity-building. The CF expects most grants to be made in the £5k to £60K range. The Legal Services Commission, a nondepartmental public body and the former home of the CF’s chief executive and its director for Wales, is to get £250,000 as a contribution to a three-way £850,000 scheme with the Welsh Assembly government, to resource access to information, advice and legal services for communities in Wales. The Community Fund is additionally seconding a staff member to the LSC for three months to help administer the grants programme. Voluntary groups will need to apply to the LSC for applications information, once the scheme opens in the spring. This scheme is also a 12-month pilot. Graham Benfield, chief executive of the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, had not been aware of the LSC deal, but gave it a cautious welcome. ‘It could,’ he said, ‘be an imaginative solution to a real problem of funding inequalities for community legal services in Wales. But I would want to see more details of the scheme before passing judgement.’