7:40pm Tuesday 7th April 2009
By Tyrone Marshall
A SLICE of a £10million Lottery funding package could be used for sports facilities in the Ribble Valley.
Bidding for the Sport England funding, aimed specifically at rural communities, opens this week, and councils have until the end of June to apply for a share of the cash.
Ribble Valley was the only local authority in East Lancashire to qualify as a rural community under Government-set criteria, with 92 per cent of the borough classed as living in rurality, and was one of 158 local authority’s across the country.
Chris Hughes, community services manager for the council, said: “We are looking to have a meeting with Sport England in the coming weeks to establish a more detailed criteria of what they are looking for.
“But we welcome the funding, rural communities are often overlooked for this kind of project so we hope to make good use of it.
“I believe they are looking for significant and innovative projects, which we may have to work with other partners on, so we wouldn’t want to speculate on what the projects may be at the moment.”
Sport England the money is being made available to rural communities because “they face particular barriers to participating in sport, such as reduced choice in the sports available to them and transportation issues getting to and from facilities.”
The minimum grant available will be £10,000, but Sport England is encouraging high value, high impact projects, and say a significant proportion of the successful bids are expected to be for funding of over £500,000.
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