Falkirk Council: Cast your votes for Community Choices funding for local groups

Voting is open for the next four weeks for the final round of Falkirk Council’s Community Choices, with around £800,000 up for grabs for the ideas that get the most public support.

There are 24 proposals competing for larger capital grants and 26 for smaller amounts of up to £5000.

It’s the fourth round of funding in the scheme – and will be the final part of the £3.5 million that was set aside by Falkirk Council for the initiative.

Since it was launched in 2021, 123 projects have secured funds through Community Choices.

The leader of the Falkirk Council, Councillor Cecil Meiklejohn, said: “We’ve seen some fantastic projects where the funding has made a real difference in communities.”

She highlights previous projects such as Bailliefields Community Hub in Maddiston, a cricket club that has been transformed to create a welcoming, fully accessible facility for the whole community.

Funding awarded to Bainsford Community Hall was used for major building work to make space for a local charity shop to move into the premises, its rent providing an ongoing income to the hall.

The money was made available when the Scottish Government agreed to allocate one per cent of all local authority budgets to ‘participatory budgeting’.

Mrs Meiklejohn said: “We are very aware that many of the communities feel very disaffected and they don’t feel close to the council at times.

“This is one way of bringing them closer to council and actually having a direct say over money that we do spend.

“Some areas of spending are statutory and have to be done but in others there is a choice to be made and that’s why we want people to have more say and make sure things are relevant and important to them.”

Donna Heaney, community planning co-ordinator, explained: “One of the key things was to try and build trust in democracy within our communities.”

An advisory panel selects the projects and council staff work closely with groups and organisations to make sure there’s nothing that might stop their being successful.

They are looking for things such as proper accounts and a constitution that show the group is in good shape to take a project forward.

“There are a lot of checks because we want the groups to succeed,” says Donna.

The scrutiny, she says, means that even projects that are not successful are in better shape to apply for other sources of funding and they will always be pointed in the right direction.

But they’re not judging the groups on how good their proposals are.

“That’s very much up to the public to decide!” said Donna.

To succeed, the projects must achieve at least ten per cent of the public vote in their area.

Since the first round of Community Choices, both the councils and communities have learned a huge amount.

Donna hopes this will stand them in good stead for the future as Community Choices as we know it comes to an end.

In the future, the focus will turn to projects in the council’s mainstream budget, with the aim of giving residents more of a say on what should be a priority.

For now though, they are hoping large numbers will vote – either online through Participate Plus or by casting a paper vote in any one of the local libraries.

Donna was delighted to see that after just one day, 500 people had already voted – which means the groups taking part are already getting the message out that they need support.

How it works:

If you live in the Falkirk Council area and are aged 16 or above, you can vote for the projects you think will make the biggest difference to the area in which you live.

You have three votes to cast in favour of projects listed in Small Grants and three votes for those listed in the Place-based Capital Grants programmes.

You can only vote for Small Grant projects from your ward, but in the Capital Grant category there are four Falkirk-wide projects which are deemed to bring benefit across the whole Council area; everyone can vote for these.

Voting closes on Friday, February 23. Successful projects will be announced on Friday, March 29.