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RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

Establish Community Compact

N/A

May-21

N/A

Partnership in place between the community and voluntary sector and the council. Joint projects completed and greater resilience.

KCC established a Strategic Partnership Board for the VCSE and a VCSE Steering Group, which is independent of KCC and brings together a range of VCS representatives. The terms of reference for this group have now been formalised and MBC is represented by the Insight, Communities and Governance Manager.

Support and Encourage Volunteering in the Borough.

£25,000 Recovery Fund

Jun-21

Oct-22

Increase in the number of volunteers, volunteering in the Borough and as a consequence more community initiatives delivered. Work with Involve to develop an indicator.

Funding and Volunteering event held for VSC groups in Maidstone.

 

Second Volunteering event focussing on funding scheduled for July 2023 to include National Lottery, Crowdfunding Kent and Funding for All.

 

Survey with VCS groups currently being undertaken to review support needs.

Online Community Participation

£15,000 Recovery Fund

Sep-21

 

Online tool in place and used to successfully engage with the public on projects and initiatives.

Since its launch in July the platform has been used to deliver the following general Consultation and Engagement activities: 

Operation Brock, Mote Park Art, Scarecrow festival, Marden Task Force, Waste and Recycling Newsletter, Community Governance Review, Budget Survey, Community Wi-Fi, Air Quality Action Plan, Resident Survey, Sutton Valence Polling Places Review, Museum After School Survey, Town Centre PSPO, Lockmeadow Survey.

 

A Planning Hub has been created for Planning and Economic Development based consultations, this has hosted mapping for the Design & Sustainability and the Gypsy & Traveller site DPDs. It also has hosted consultations on strategic development at Springfields Library site and the Royal Mail Sorting Office site.

 

This site has allowed us to engage with people in several different ways outside of questionnaires. The mapping tools have been used for Planning DPD consultations as well as Operation Brock and the Resident Survey.  The quick poll function has been used to gain feedback on disruption to waste collections and the ideas function was used for gather ideas relating to waste and recycling.

 

Each project can use the variety of engagement tools at once allowing people to respond to the elements they feel are most important while keeping everything in one location.

 

Comments that are submitted through the website are moderated and given a sentiment, these comments can also be tagged.

 

The site also provided a dedicated space to archive consultation activities and publish results allowing the consultation process loop to be closed.

Community Resilience Fund

£150,000 Recovery Fund

Oct-21

Oct-24

30 projects delivered by a variety of community and voluntary sector groups and organisations.

1st wave of funding – £89,842 allocated to 23 projects. The 2nd wave of funding – £30,086 allocated to a further 18 projects.

3rd wave of funding to go live for applications in June/July 2023.

Love Where You Live and Get Involved.

£35,000 Recovery Fund

Sep-21

Sep-22

8 community environmental projects delivered. Civic Pride increased as measured by the Resident’s Survey. Baseline the number of participants in the project.

Love where you live fund went live for four weeks from 6th March to 27th March 2023. 23 organisations were awarded a total of £35,000 to support community projects improving the local environment.