Joint working 1: community halls

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In a move that addresses a long-running complaint about Lottery funding, the Community Fund, Arts Council of England and Sport England have announced a jointly funded trial pro-gramme for community buildings, to run in the West Midlands. The £2m pro-gramme opens in September 2002, for groups wanting £5,000-£100,000 towards improvements to their village hall or community centre. Typically this might mean refurbishment of premises, upgrading for disabled access, improvements to kitchen facilities, installation of a stage, seating, removable partitions, soundproofing, and so on. New buildings will not be eligible for funding. Partnership funding requirements will generally follow the Community Fund’s own rules as laid out in its recent strategic plan. A single application form will be processed in the first instance by the Community Fund, after which awards will be determined by a joint panel of the three distributors, meeting every two months. Turnaround times on applications will probably be four to five months, depending on award size.

Funding for community halls has been a bugbear for the distributors, as it tends to provoke the kinds of applications that blur the strict divisions between arts, sports and charitable purposes, and end up falling foul of everyone’s criteria. The Government singled out this problem some years back as one that generated many public complaints and demonstrated the inappropriate and inflexible approach of the funding bodies.

The Community Fund is putting £1.365m into the new scheme, with ACE contributing £0.25m and Sport England £0.385m. The trial will last 18 months before an evaluation to decide whether to roll the scheme out nationally.

To register interest or for more information contact 0121 200 3500.