£825,000 spent on 56 community projects, but some of them are a secret

Shared Prosperity Funding has been allocated to 56 projects in Medway, but details only exist for 39 of them

In 2022, the government allocated Medway £1.8m as part of a new national funding initiative. Across the UK, £2.6bn of Shared Prosperity Fund money was distributed to local councils to use as they saw fit, within the plan's limits. The government kept things rather lose on the exact requirements of how the money should be spent, instead allowing local councils how to allocate the funds:

‘It is about levelling up opportunity and prosperity and overcoming deep-seated geographical inequalities that have held us back for too long.

It is also, fundamentally, about levelling up people’s pride in the places they love and seeing that reflected back in empowered local leaders and communities, a stronger social fabric and better life chances.’

As a result, many different approaches have been taken across the country regarding how to spend the money. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many councils used the funds to advance their priorities at a time of limited budgets.

For example, our neighbours in Tonbridge and Malling used some of the money to buy CCTV cameras to combat anti-social behaviour, improve lighting in car parks, retrofit their leisure centres, and more. Ashford bought some new lighting and play equipment for the town centre. Maidstone turned an empty building into an arts hub and bought some new lights, in what seems to be a trend.

These lists are, of course, by no means exhaustive. But it points to how many councils spent the money on tangible, somewhat dull day-to-day investments that arguably should have already been funded regardless.

The path that Medway charted in all this was somewhat different.