Funding for the Trust

Bentham Development Trust has been successful in gaining funding, even obtaining financial support from European as well as National Lottery sources. In addition it has received funding from: the Regional Development Council/Yorkshire Forward the *North Yorkshire County Council, (which is responsible for all monies from the Rural Development Programme) Craven District Council European Union objective 5 b (the Community Development Fund) monies as well as the County's Capital Development Programme in Rural Areas The Development Trust has applied for further Lottery Funding and hopes to continue its very successful community enhancement activities for a further three years. As with every other Community Regeneration group a very substantial proportion of staff time has to be spent on applying to potential funders. The very small staff of two part-timers (plus some occasional administrative assistance) and the considerable unpaid efforts of all the Board Members have had to cope with an immense work load but, as a result, there has been a very effective use of the limited financial resources. There is considerable "on the ground" evidence of the work of this very small Development Trust - it is only the lack of human resources and money to support the effort which holds back a wide variety of new initiatives to improve the quality of life for the local community.

Difficulties in funding local schemes

As can be seen from the list of work undertaken in Bentham the town has been particularly successful in attracting a wide range of funding, but almost all of it has been on the basis of matched funding. This has only been possible through the presence of the Trust's paid part-time staff who have made the time to cope with the vast amount of paper work and administration necessary to attract outside matched funding. For those unfamiliar with the term: matched funding means that any funds allocated by one Agency must be matched with funds from other Agencies or the private sector before it can be used by the local community. The funds from all the different funding agencies are put together to achieve the sum required to undertake a task and each funding agency requires at least quarterly accounting on how their funds are used, often in a totally different format. When up to five different funding agencies can be involved in one project, this is a complex and incredibly time consuming, not to say inefficient and bureaucratic task for any small community; it is one which locally is thought to deter many small local communities from undertaking local improvements. In particular, when they only require small sums to initiate and complete small-scale on-the-ground improvements, the hassle does not seem worth it. Yet in poor rural areas there is not the spare cash to undertake improvements without outside funding. It has caused difficulties for community groups nationwide that local Town Councils, District Councils, as well as County Councils, have limited scope to do more than aid a small number of the projects which need to be implemented to improve the quality of life for their local communities; they themselves are starved of cash under the financial controls which central government have imposed on local authorities over the past twenty years in an attempt to be in total control of all national spending. One of the particularly unfortunate features of much of the funding that is available to small local community groups is that it is retrospective. This means that money has to be found up-front to spend on the ground or on people's time, in order to get projects underway before the money can be claimed back from the funders. For small community groups in relatively poor areas this is an almost impossible situation - there is no spare local money to start the projects where there are no affluent concerns or individuals. Many ideas and projects never get off the ground because of this funding requirement - as part of the financial controls of such projects community groups cannot borrow money in advance and pay interest as any other group in society might, as the interest cannot be claimed from the funding body.