Pride in Your High Street fund launched
Telford & Wrekin Council has announced three workshops for those interested in bidding for money from its £1m Pride in Your High Street fund.
Following approval of the Council’s budget, the £1m Pride in Your High Street fund has been launched, with the aim of providing a major boost for the high streets of Telford and Wrekin’s towns and local centres.
The Pride in Your High Street fund is open for any organisations in the following areas to apply for: Dawley, Donnington, Hadley, Ironbridge, Madeley, Newport, Oakengates, St Georges and Wellington.
The £1m fund, a new part of the Council’s Pride in Your Community initiative, will be split into two parts.
The first part of the fund, a total of £800,000, will be open for organisations to bid for, for projects including:
· Increasing footfall in a high street or centre
· Bringing redundant or empty buildings back into use
· Bringing a new service or function to a high street or centre
· Making a high street or centre cleaner and more pleasant
· Extending established operating hours of a high street or centre, for example at evenings or weekends
· Creating or protecting jobs
The maximum any area could receive from the fund would be set at £100,000, with the most a single project could be awarded limited to £100,000 and a minimum grant of £5,000.
The Council wants to encourage a range of organisations including parish and town councils, regeneration partnerships, business, charities and voluntary sector groups to apply for this money.
Bidders will be expected to provide at least 10 per cent match funding for their project and it is hoped that the Pride in Your High Streets fund will be used to secure much larger amounts of match funding from other organisations.
The second part will be a £200,000 innovation fund. For this, the Council will be seeking expressions of interest from groups in the same areas who wish to develop original ideas that will encourage wider community involvement.
This part of the fund would help support projects and events that promote borough towns as destinations, highlighting their distinctive and individual attractions.
The application process for bids and expressions of interest for each fund will be open from mid May, with a deadline of the end of July. Successful schemes would be notified in the early autumn.
Next month, Telford & Wrekin Council will host three workshops for any prospective bidders to explain to them the bidding process.
Councillor Shaun Davies, cabinet member for Neighbourhood Services, Employment and Skills, said:
“This is a great opportunity for towns and local centres in the borough to create new initiatives that can help improve our high streets.
“This Council fund will allow local groups to come up with their own ideas of what they would like to do to help make their high street and town centre an even better place and attract more visitors.
“I am excited to see what projects will come forward for this fund and am sure it will provide a lasting boost for our borough and help our drive to make Telford and Wrekin a place that people want to come to, visit and invest in.”
The three workshops for prospective bidders will be held on Thursday 23 April in Oakengates, Tuesday 28 April in Dawley and Thursday 30 April in Newport. Anyone interested in these workshops should call 01952 567589 for more information.
