Maude promises new fund for neighbourhood groups

The Government will set up a fund to foster the creation of community groups in deprived areas, Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, has disclosed. Revenue for the fund will come from the £200 million Futurebuilders programme, whose closure had been announced earlier by Civil Society minister, Nick Hurd.

Maude said the new Communities First fund would provide start-up funding for community groups in disadvantaged parts of the country. He did not say how much the fund was worth or when it would open.

Charities would be encouraged to offer support to the community groups financed by the fund, said Maude.

Speaking at a conference in London, the minister said that one of the Government's main aims was to increase social capital in local areas by creating small neighbourhood groups.

"We want to be super-local, seriously neighbourhood-based and almost microscopically granular," he said.

The Government would also ensure that charities and social enterprises bidding for payment-by-results contracts in welfare or the rehabilitation of prisoners would have access to working capital so they were able to compete, Maude said.

One source of this would be the proposed Big Society Bank. "We will pay up for this," he said. "We won't cheesepare it."
Maude also told the conference that the Government would cut red tape to make it easier to set up a charity or a social enterprise, and said the third sector would receive a "better share" of public funds.

A spokesman for the Cabinet Office said later that the fund would operate in the most deprived areas of England with low social capital. The amount in the fund would be decided in the coming months.

[from: Third Sector Online 9.6.10]