Over £1m in funding granted for community groups, charities and talented athletes by Nottinghamshire County Council

Over £1m in funding has been granted to community groups, charities and talented athletes as part of new council grants.

Nottinghamshire County Council granted funding of £1.28m to 82 groups and 75 talented athletes during the Communities Committee meeting on March 9.

The grants are split into large grants of over £5,000, small grants of under £5,000, capital revenue and talented athletes funding.

The discretionary funding is distributed by Nottinghamshire County Council under the Local Communities Fund whereby applicants demonstrated that their projects will help people live healthier and more independent lives, as well as keeping children, vulnerable people and communities safe and protecting the environment.

Organisations which will receive funding include Age UK, Citizens Advice Broxtowe, Disability Nottinghamshire and Stonebridge City Farm.

A number of parish councils also benefitted from funding.

Mark Walker, Group Manager, Trading Standards and Communities, said: "There has been an excellent response from the community to the opening of the programmes.

"We've had 95 applications for revenue funding, 12 for capital and 77 for talented athletes funding.

"They asked in total for £2.8m which is obviously in excess of the budget that we had.

"Lots of work and careful thought has been undertaken to identify those applications that should be funded and to what level they should be funded.

"The numbers that have been worked up was around looking at giving a lower percentage of money to more people than giving a higher percentage to a fewer number of people."

Councillor Daniel Williamson (Ashfield Ind) added: "The money is not as much as any of us would like to give in an ideal world but we are where we are.

"I would rather more organisations got it than not."

Councillor Tom Smith (Con), chair of the meeting, said: "We would love to be able to give as much money as is possible but the nature of a finite pot is that we have decided to spread it across as many groups as we can cover."

Councillors voted in favour of the recommendations to approve the funding with one abstention.