Hawksworth Wood, has secured £1m of funding from the Local Trust programme, Big Local. The Hawksworth Wood area includes the Hawksworth Wood Estate, the Abbeydales the Vesper Gates and all the houses contained in the bend of Vesper Road.­

Big Local is an exciting opportunity for residents to use £1m of funding to make a lasting positive difference to their communities in areas around England. They say it’s about “…bringing together all the local talent, ambitions, skills and energy from individuals, groups and organisations who want to make their area an even better place to live.” The trust targets areas that may not have been successful in gaining funding and resources in the past.

Big Local, a £200m investment, was launched by the Big Lottery Fund in July 2010 to support 150 small urban and rural communities to come together to make their areas even better places to live.

As well as funding, each Big Local area receives support, training, and networking opportunities from a range of partners, to help residents develop plans to improve their area and empower them to find solutions that work for their communities.

The fundamental outcomes of the programme aim to be:

• Communities will be better able to identify local needs and take action in response to them.
• People will have increased skills and confidence, so that they continue to identify and respond to needs in the future.
• The community will make a difference to the needs it prioritises.
• People will feel that their area is an even better place to live.

Local Trust say: “It is not about your local authority, the government or a national organisation telling you what to do”, instead it is about people making a lasting difference to their own communities.

The chosen areas are encouraged to work on issues that affect the whole community and are expected to consult a wide range of different people within the local area to discover what these issues may be. The plans that are to be developed are about long-term thinking and not expected to deliver short-term goals.

Martin Newton, who has been acting as co-ordinator for the programme says:

“The people living in the Abbeydales Vespers and Hawksworth estates have been working together to develop a community plan that helps bring the communities together and makes the HAVA area a better place to live. The area has in the past been subject to many initiatives from outside agencies most proving to be unsustainable or ineffective. The BIG Local Project is all about local residents finding their own ways of solving major issues that affect their daily lives. HAVA solutions to HAVA problems. The importance being placed on local people making choices, all Big local board members will be local residents only local people can vote for them and only local people can make spend choices.  The project has been supported by local community groups, statutory agencies based on the estate, the local councillors, MP and area committee. The feeling is If we keep doing what we are doing then nothing will change. Big Local gives us a chance to do it our way”

The money can be spent on almost anything that makes the local community a better place to live. Local areas will be giving out grants, social investments (loans), and procuring services in their community, for example, setting up a community-run café, a neighbourhood watch scheme on an estate with a large number of older people, or a new sports club to give young people something active to do.

For more information about the scheme you can visit www.localtrust.org.uk/big-local