Funding shared prosperity

Medway opened a new round of funding for local projects today. What does it mean for residents?

The Shared Prosperity Fund is a government programme about creating pride in place. Today, Medway Council launched the third year of a three-year programme. Essentially, it is a programme to give money directly to the community to make things happen. We chatted with Cllr Lauren Edwards, portfolio holder for Economic and Social Regeneration and Inward Investment, to discuss the bottom-up approach for allocating funds and the scheme's future. 

The Intra area of Chatham. Photo: stock.adobe.com

In 2023, the second year of the fund focused on town centre events and dealing with social issues like combating loneliness. The fund is not specifically part of the levelling up agenda, but Cllr Edwards thinks that it is ‘thematically linked.’ “I would say the UK SPF has been much more successful than the Levelling Up fund,” she says. With the SPF supporting community groups, businesses, and organisations rather than delivering huge projects, it’s arguable that it does impact more people directly.

“Over the last year and for this forthcoming year, we are not necessarily giving the money to large organisations but actually saying to local businesses, community groups, what do you want to see happen in your area and how can we use small pots of money to help you realise that.”

The second year of the fund was also centred mainly around the theme of pride in place, which was about creating cultural experiences for residents and visitors, and there was a small fund for feasibility studies. They received 68 applications, and 26 projects were supported. There were a lot of applications focused on town centre events, specifically from Chatham and the Intra area, where more well-established groups are already coming up with ideas, and resulted in several successful events.

These included:

• The return of the Chinese New Year Event, through funding to the Chatham Town Centre Forum.

• Luton Light Train, through funding to Ideas Test.

• Young Hack, from Electric Medway.

• Intra Parklets, With the High Street Heritage Cultural Consortium

• Sun Wharf Regeneration, with Tiller & Wheel.

The feasibility fund from the second year will help give organisations and businesses proof of concept, meaning they can either apply in the next year to realise the project or look for other sources of external funding. According to Cllr Edwards, we’re already seeing the benefits of these projects: “The parklets along Intra, they are successful, so we would be expecting further work in that area.”