Elected Member Briefing - Fairer Communities for All update

About this Briefing Note

Report by: Elaine Ritchie, Strategic Lead, Housing and Communities

EMBN Number: 101-25 

Date: 08 August 2025 

Subject: Fairer Communities for All update

Details

Purpose

To provide elected members with an updated overview of the new, streamlined process, approved by the Housing and Social Wellbeing Committee in June 2025, for combining Community Investment Funding (CIF) and Participatory Budget (PB) funding application and assessment into a single process.

Briefing Information

In February 2025 Council allocated £200,000 for Community Investment Fund (CIF) and £100K for Participatory Budgeting (PB) to be delivered in the year 2025/26. This totalled £300k but due to underspends of £47,256, the total budget was £347,255.96.

In previous years CIF and PB funds have been delivered through separate application and assessment processes, creating a number of issues: 

• Feedback from community groups has been that the plethora of PKC grants can be confusing, particularly as the criteria is often very similar, for example, inequalities, cost of living.
• Smaller community groups find it challenging to apply multiple times to separate funding streams due to staff and volunteer capacity and cannot always develop new projects to meet criteria.
• Some community groups have become dependent on CIF funding, showing an over reliance on PKC funds.
• Attendance at ward panels and representation from the community has been mixed and council officers and elected members can find it difficult to secure attendance from community members.
• PKC staff no longer have the capacity to manage multiple funding application and assessment processes over a 12-month period as it vastly reduces the time for genuine capacity building and networking and places significant demand on business support and finance functions.

The proposal agreed at Housing and Social Wellbeing Committee in June 2025 was for CIF and PB funding application and assessment to be combined into one process.  This new process will include the follow stages:

• Community Engagement Survey - Communities will be invited to complete an Engagement Survey to outline their local priorities.
• Data Analysis & Community Discussions -After the survey closes, data analysis meetings will be held in each ward with local community groups, elected members and organisations. These sessions are scheduled for Monday 1 September - Friday 12 September and will:

o   Review the survey findings.

o   Identify key community priorities.

o   Reduce duplication of efforts.

o   Encourage collaboration between groups.

• Application Preparation -Groups and organisations will use insights from the above meetings to inform and shape their funding applications.
• Application Submission -Applications to be submitted between Monday 15 September - Friday 3 October.
• Ward-Level Screening Panels -Each of the 12 wards will host a panel meeting, including elected members and Council Officers, to review and screen applications before they proceed to public voting.
• Public Voting Period -Voting will be open from Monday 27 October - Friday 14 November.
• Vote Validation -Final validation of votes will take place from Monday 17 November - Friday 21 November.
• Results Events -Results will be announced at events held between Monday 24 November and Saturday 29 November.
• Funding Distribution -Payments to successful projects will begin the week commencing 1 December.

At the June 2024 Housing and Social Wellbeing Committee it was agreed that the following communities would be treated as priority areas for Participatory Budgeting funding based on SMID and ACORN data as they currently experience the highest inequalities:

• Old Scone, Central and North Perth
• South Crieff
• Rattray
• Coupar Angus, Alyth and Meigle

Wards which have CIF and PB or CIF only are shown below:

Ward Panels and Voting

Ward panels will meet in October to review the applications submitted to ensure they meet the needs identified during the engagement survey phase and meet eligibility criteria.  Membership of the ward panels will be Council Officers and Ward Members, with a representative from the Community learning and Development Team co-ordinating and supporting the panel.  The panel will decide which projects should go to the public vote.  Clear criteria and scoring framework will be in place for both CIF and PB funding.

Voting events organised by the CLD Team will be held across Perth and Kinross between 27^th October and 14^th November to enable local people to vote on the projects they wish to support. The CLD Team will ask local people to vote for 5 votes unless there are 5 or less projects in which case, a percentage of the number of projects people can vote for will be agreed with elected members.

As part of our ongoing work to simplify and streamline engagement with communities voting for the Green Living Fund (GLF) will also take place. The GLF has been designed to provide support to community groups with projects that help address both the cost of living and climate crises.  It uses a participatory budgeting approach to build community buy-in and deliver local desires.  Members decided to allocate £200k of funding for GLF- Round 2 as part of the budget setting process for 2025/26.  Proposals for the 25/26 round of GLF will be presented to Climate Change and Sustainability Committee on 20 August 2025.

In areas where CIF and PB is available people will be asked to vote for CIF (ward) and PB (identified town or village) and GLF separately.  For those Wards where only CIF funding is available that will be the only option along with GLF.

It should be noted that the scheme of administration for the Kinross-shire Committee states that the Committee shall have the decision-making power to: "To allocate and monitor expenditure from agreed localized funds", which in this case is the CIF.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Given the new process, and to provide address any queries or concerns with the new process, a check-in stage will be built into the stages as outlined in section 2.3.  This will include feedback from Elected Members and community members.

Groups who are successful in receiving funding will be required to complete a 12-month monitoring report, setting out:

• how they have used the grant funding.
• the number of beneficiaries.
• numbers of volunteers supporting delivery.
• the impact the grant funding has made.
• case studies to showcase the project and impact.

An evaluation report regarding the co-ordination and delivery of future grant funding will also be brought to Housing and Social Wellbeing Committee in Spring 2026.

Funding Allocations