Falkirk Council: Community Choices grant funding to end despite 'enormous success'

But while the Community Choices funding for large-scale capital projects will come to an end after the next round of applications, Falkirk Council insists communities will still be involved in making decisions on how some of the council’s budget is spent.

The small grant scheme, offering up to £5000 for community projects, will continue and there will also be funding for Falkirk Council tenants’ community choices.

Members of Falkirk Council’s executive committee heard how successful the initiative has been when they met on Tuesday.

Community Choices was Falkirk Council’s name for participatory budgeting, which is now a requirement of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. Councils must allocate at least one per cent of their funding to projects that offer local residents a way to have a direct say in how public money can be used locally.

Since 2021, more than 120 grants have been awarded – 56 capital place-based grants and 69 small grants – with a value of more than £2.8 million.

More than 55,000 votes were cast in a series of ballots that saw people voting for local projects.

Successful projects that were highlighted to members included work to make Falkirk Golf Club’s clubhouse and course more accessible for buggy users and a grant to Bo’ness Cars 4U where a free hospital transfer service was offered to cancer patients who would have difficulty in getting to appointments.

The projects have been put forward and supported by local people who then help to deliver them and members heard that while there was no shortage of good ideas, not all communities had the capacity to deliver the projects without a lot of help.

Phase 4 of the scheme – which will have £900,000 to distribute – has still to launch and the report says the council is expecting lots of applications following the success of the third round.

Once the final round has finished, the full scheme will be evaluated by local members.

Members of the executive heard that after the final round of voting, the council will move away from the grant-based Community Choices approach towards a “mainstream approach where communities and individuals will become central to making decisions for a proportion of operational budgets and services”.

Council leader, Cecil Meiklejohn, said the Community Choices programme had been hugely successful in enabling partnership with communities.

She said: “We have seen how communities have flourished, with significant numbers voting for the projects and that is a good basis for us now to look to the next phase, mainstreaming of participatory budgeting.”

She added that while place-based capital allocations may be reintroduced in future it would have to be done in the context of other priorities, including schools and leisure facilities.

“I’m hugely proud of some of the projects that have been delivered and the engagement we’ve had with our communities,” she said, adding that the small grants would continue to give support to community initiatives.

Councillor Gary Bouse added: “The energy and passion from our communities has more than matched anything that could have been imagined at the beginning of community choices.”