Funding boost for councils putting communities back in control
Projects which help councils deliver more for less by working with local communities and neighbourhood groups awarded share of £2 million.
Projects which help councils deliver more for less by working with local communities and neighbourhood groups to redesign services to address their needs have today been awarded a share of £2 million to develop them further.
Communities Minister Stephen Williams announced 24 successful bidders for Delivering Differently in Neighbourhoods funding after they set out innovative approaches to transform services, drawing on the energy and expertise of local people to help to reduce reliance on public services and cut waste - giving local people a greater role in solving problems in their local area by themselves.
The successful bids include:
- reducing loneliness and making lives better for older people in Croydon by redesigning the meals on wheels service
- helping support the needs of vulnerable people in rural Herefordshire by developing a number of local Wellbeing Hubs with local GPs
- working with survivors of domestic violence to help support current users in North Somerset
- ensuring older adults can stay in their own homes for longer in Leeds through care delivery in partnership with the voluntary sector
- improving public health in Buckinghamshire through using the expertise of residents to create neighbourhood-led physical activity programmes
Communities Minister Stephen Williams said:
The councils behind these projects are outlining plans to cleverly use resources and provide services that make a real difference to people’s lives.
Empowering local people to have a greater role in local services will not only help eliminate needless duplication and cut waste but it will ensure better services are delivered to people how they want them – at a local neighbourhood level.
The government will work with all 24 authorities to understand the impact of these new approaches, their costs and benefits and to share effective models for service delivery at neighbourhood level.
Delivering Differently in Neighbourhoods will complement the government’s Our Place programme, which is working with neighbourhood groups seeking to redesign services in their area.
Further information
The £2 million will be shared between 24 local authorities. Each individual local authority will receive between £60,000 and £90,000.
| Bracknell Forest Council | Neighbourhood model which uses parents as navigators to support at risk families and prevent escalation of need. |
| Buckinghamshire County Council | Improving public health through a community-led physical activity programme, engaging volunteers from across the county and building on the assets within communities. |
| Cheshire East Council | Devolution of services to a new town council in Macclesfield and creation of community hubs. |
| City of York Council | Redesign children’s centres with communities in disadvantaged neighbourhoods to support and engage local families and improve school readiness. |
| Durham County Council | Transfer of a range of services to parish and town councils and development of reciprocal arrangements to allow more local sharing of resources. |
| Essex County Fire and Rescue Service | Fire service project to redesign community safety and resilience services and explore how the fire service can support other agencies. |
| Great Yarmouth Borough Council | Establish neighbourhood hubs to work with families to prevent the escalation of need and reduce the number of children at risk of being placed in care. This project will also link to the DCLG funded Our Place project that is operating in the town to tackle unemployment. |
| Herefordshire Council | Project to develop better support for vulnerable residents by working with GPs, parish councils and communities to develop Wellbeing Hubs in isolated rural areas. |
| Kent County Council | Building on work with neighbourhoods to develop models for social care co-operatives to give users more control and support greater self-care. |
| Leeds City Council | A new, neighbourhood based, care planning pathway in Leeds Adult Social Care that will use neighbourhood commissioning and partnership with the voluntary sector to help people to remain independent in their own homes for longer. |
| Leicester City Council | Support for large scale transfer of public assets to community ownership. |
| London Borough of Croydon | Redesign meals on wheels services into neighbourhood community meals services which utilise existing community resources and address wider social needs such as isolation and loneliness. |
| London Borough of Lambeth | Devolution of management of parks to the community. |
| Luton Borough Council | Integrating health and social care and using social prescribing at neighbourhood level. |
| Middlesbrough Council | Improving school readiness by bringing together Children’s Centres, Early Years, Troubled Families, community support and voluntary action at neighbourhood level. |
| North Lincolnshire Council | Working with parish councils to redesign advice and guidance services and deliver more of these through mobile libraries and digital media. |
| North Somerset Council | Neighbourhood model of domestic abuse support, which involves former users of domestic violence services. |
| Plymouth City Council | Model for community management of green spaces. |
| Portsmouth City Council | Expansion and evaluation of a project to use navigators to identify and support at risk families at an early stage to become more independent and resilient. |
| Rochdale Borough Council | Project to understand the benefits of a community-led redesign of domestic violence services in a neighbourhood with high incidence of domestic abuse. The project will take a family based approach and focus on behaviour and attitude change. |
| Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead | Devolution of a range of environmental services to parish councils. |
| Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council | Model to provide neighbourhood level support to adult social care users through the voluntary sector – evaluation of 6 pilots to understand what works and impact on users and costs. |
| South Norfolk Council | Working with communities and a range of public sector bodies to redesign Early Help and support for independent living. This project builds on a successful Our Place pilot. |
| Waveney District Council | Embedding and evaluating a project in Lowestoft which addresses a range of social issues. |
Delivering Differently in Neighbourhoods is part of the wider Department for Communities and Local Government policy Giving local authorities more control over how they spend public money in their area.
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