Transforming Local Infrastructure fund

Today saw the release of more information about the £30m Infrastructure fund from the Cabinet Office (administered by the Big Lottery Fund). The aim of the fund is to transform CVS organisations like ours, and other infrastructure organisations, into organisations that will become more sustainable and less reliant on government funding.  So there will be quite an emphasis on becoming more enterprising, generating more income ourselves, and being more efficient with the funding we do have.   There are lots of ways we could do this, and some of you have already started generating ideas in the past few weeks.

By 2nd September we have to complete an expression of interest, a full bid by 31st October, and we will find out by end of January 2012 if we have been successful. The funding will be to spend over 18 months, from April 2012 to September 2013.  Although it’s a relatively short period of time to spend the money, there is funding of between £250,000 and £400,000 available for each local authority area.

Here is more information we have about the bid. In August we will devote quite a bit of time to talking with our members and the sector, including potential partners, to make sure we get our expression of interest as good as it can be. We will then have September and October to work together on the full bid.

Anyone who is interested in giving ideas for this, please contact York CVS, and we’ll get the dates out for making space to talk about it very soon. We are very keen to see this opportunity used to make sure that York has the high quality infrastructure support it deserves.  We'd be really pleased if you could help us make that happen.

Thank you

Angela Harrison
Chief Executive