Greenstead's Pride in Place Award
What is it?
The Pride in Place programme is the Government's plan to give £5 billion over the next ten years to local residents to shape their own futures.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/pride-in-place
Prior to Pride in Place the scheme was called Plan for Neighbourhoods.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/plan-for-neighbourhoods
Why Greenstead?
£20m (10x £2m per year) has specifically been awarded to the Maggie Field area based upon the scores in deprivation indices.
The deprivation indicies are the Government's measure of how well a place is doing. It's broken down into the following sections.
- Income
- Employment
- Education, Skills and Training
- Health
- Crime
- Barriers to Housing
- Living Environment
Education, Skills and Training is broken down into 'Children' and 'Adult' indices.
Barriers to Housing is broken down into subcategories of 'Geographical' and 'Wider' indices.
Living Environment is broken down into 'Indoors' and 'Outdoors'.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/english-indices-of-deprivation
What's next?
As set out in the Pride in Place guidelines the community is expected to establish a neighbourhood board that represents our interests. The board then puts together a 10 year draft plan on how to spend the money.
To create the plan the board is required to conduct "extensive consultation" with residents through public meetings, etc.
Given the size of the sum of money involved it's appropriate to have the scope of the funding defined plus a written constitution covering the following;
- when people join and leave the board
- establishing transparency
- the right of the community to heard and kept informed
- the process of authorising spending
There should also be a published record of accounts showing every purchase made.