Telford & Wrekin's £1m Pride in Your High Street fund opens for bids
Telford & Wrekin’s £1m Pride in Your High Street fund which aims of providing a major boost for the high streets of Telford and Wrekin’s towns and local centres is now open for bids.
The Pride in Your High Street fund is open for any organisations in the following areas: Dawley, Donnington, Hadley, Ironbridge, Madeley, Newport, Oakengates, St Georges and Wellington.
Workshops have taken place over the last month to explain the application process for those interested in bidding for money from the £1m fund. Along with strong turnout for the workshops, there were also some great ideas for bid proposals.
The fund is all about working with the community and encourages groups to work together to submit significant bids that will greatly benefit a town or centre rather than smaller bids that may just benefit individual groups.
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 projects focussed on:
· 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 can receive from the fund is £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.
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 of the fund is 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 for each fund is now open, with a deadline of the end of July. Successful schemes will be notified in the autumn.
Anyone wanting to find out more about the fund can email highstreetprideenquiry@telford.gov.uk. The team are on hand to deal with all enquiries and send out application packs for those interested.
Kate Callis, assistant director for development, business and employment, said: “This is a great opportunity for these areas to come forward with exciting ideas and schemes that can make a real and lasting difference and help attract more people and business to these towns.”
“The fund has already grabbed a lot of people’s attention and we look forward to receiving some really exciting bids before the end of July.”
