Charity News Alert
Government to axe Community Champions Fund
Gemma Ware
The government is to close a £3m fund that provides individuals with grants to set up small-scale local projects, despite launching a new action plan last week to empower communities.
The Community Champions Fund (CCF), set up in 2000 by David Blunkett, gives grants of up to £2,000 to help people in England start up projects in their communities, particularly in deprived and excluded neighbourhoods.
The Fund, which is run out of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), has been used to support initiatives such as a national charity for foetal alcohol syndrome, rural support groups for children with special needs, and a Latin American women’s cooking group.
According to the Scarman Trust, one of the partner organisations that deliver the Fund at a local level, the CCF supports 1,800 Community Champions, nearly 16,000 volunteers and around 100,000 beneficiaries every year. But it will close in March 2008 as part of a move within central government to devolve funding decisions to local authorities.
Last week the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) published its new ‘empowerment action plan’ for England, designed to bring about greater devolution of power to people in their local communities.
The action plan, which will be endorsed by £35m of funding over the next three years, aims to give people power to make decisions in their communities. It will see the expansion of ‘community kitties’ into every local authority area within the next five years, enabling residents to have a direct say on where money is spent on public services in their area.
It comes after a citizenship survey by DCLG earlier this month found that only 37 per cent of people felt they could influence local decisions.
Despite the new action plan, the Scarman Trust is spearheading a campaign calling on the government to continue to fund Community Champions from April 2008 to continue the momentum the fund gave to support people-led initiatives.
Jane Emmanuel, co-regional director for the Scarman Trust in the south west, said the CCF was unique because it was for individuals, not organisations, and was able to bypass many of the political agendas of local government funding.
“The beauty of Champions was that it wasn’t about saying ‘you’ve got to meet these targets’,” said Emmanuel.
“The opportunity Community Champions provided was a route to do something practical in their community and for some that meant they went up a couple of stages and were able to engage with a lot of people they previously hadn’t before.”
The issue was also raised during a debate in the House of Commons last week on the third sector review, when Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart urged charities minister Phil Hope to point out the benefits of Community Champions to the DCSF.
Hope responded that he would discuss Mactaggart’s concerns with his ministerial colleagues, but that he could not “guarantee any outcomes”.
A spokeswoman for the DCSF said the fund was being closed because of a move within central government to maximise funding to local authorities and reduce the funding into centrally controlled local projects.
“This is to enable local authorities the freedom to determine how funding is best spent to ensure the best outcomes for their local population,” she said, adding that voluntary and community groups were being closely involved in decisions about how resources would be allocated.
