Fair share update

Fair Share update

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NOF and Fair Share
The New Opportunities Fund has now had its new policy directions from Government which give it the formal go-ahead on its ‘new’ £50m fund. This is one tranche of NOF’s Fair Share contribution; the second is coming from its existing Third Round Transforming Communities programme (more details below).

Endowment pot
The £50m pot is what NOF will turn over to an endowment-style fund, to be split between countries thus: England £38.75m, Scotland £5.75m, Wales £3.25m and N Ireland £2.25m. It has solicited an application from the Community Foundations Network (CFN) to become an award partner and set up and manage an expendable annuity fund with the £50m. CFN will then appoint local grant-makers to put together portfolios for 10-year community development funding. In England, the grant-makers will be local Community Foundations, which will manage funds locally for the 45 eligible Fair Share areas (six of the England areas qualify only for CF grants, not NOF ones). The foundations will begin their work in late autumn in order to have 10-year plans ready by spring 2003.

In Scotland and Wales, all Fair Share areas will be funded; this has yet to be agreed for Northern Ireland. The CFN will appoint suitable local grant-makers.

Transforming Your Space
The second tranche of NOF cash comes out of its Transforming Communities programme, with £38.75m going to the 51 England Fair Share areas. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, TYS cash will be available nationwide, not limited to Fair Share areas. Programme details will be announced this autumn.

In England, the Transforming Your Space programme is up and running. Indicative allocations have been made with a deprivation weighting, ranging from £250,000 to £1.5m per area. NOF has asked the local authorities in each of the 51 areas to act as lead organisation and Local Strategic Partnerships will have to approve the bid portfolios before they go back to NOF. NOF sent guidance to local authorities in June on the type of bids it is seeking: you can access this advice on NOF’s website at www.nof.org.uk. In general, there should be a small number of bids per authority of, for example, £100,000 to £300,000 per project, focused on environmental needs and offering a community-wide benefit. Councils must submit their proposals by November 2002, and NOF says it will take 12 weeks to assess, making this a quick turn-around programme. Match funding is not needed.

Fair Share in Northern Ireland
The formal announcement of beneficiary areas will be on or close to 9 September, after the close of a consultation exercise. The consultative paper lists 51 ward-level areas in 15 local authorities as likely participants. Again, the formula used was deprivation and population set against per capita lottery funding to date. Among the 100 most deprived wards, this produced the following results:

Below-average Community Fund spend: two wards
Below-average combined CF and NOF spend: 17 wards
Below-average spend among all other distributors: 32 wards

NOF will therefore fund 49 areas from its Annuities programme, of which 17 will also be able to access CF programme cash. The two areas not eligible for NOF cash (West Winds in Ards, Armoy in Moyle) will still get CF cash. The Community Fund is earmarking a minimum of £333,000 to each of its 19 ward-level beneficiaries. NOF’s annuities fund will be £2.25m.

Rural Fair Share
Not much progress has been made. The Community Fund is still negotiating the scheme details with the Countryside Agency and now with the agriculture department DEFRA, to try and persuade it to contribute some partnership funding. The problem seems to be about who is going to put the practical staff support into the scheme locally. It’s likely to be at least another month before any announcement.