On Friday (30th June) GWR announced that they were entering into Year 3 of their Customer Communities Improvement Fund (CCIF) and have £750,000 to award in grants. They are looking for projects that will start in April 2018 and conclude by March 2019.
Bids are now open and can be made through to the 31st August 2017.
See below for further information:
We are now entering Year 3 of our Customer and Communities Improvement Fund (CCIF). We have £750,000 to award in grants and we are looking for bids for projects that will start in April 2018 and conclude by March 2019.
Applications can be made through a simple easy-to-follow online application form, supported by a guidance booklet.
The guidance booklet and simple application form can be found at www.gwr.com/CCIF. Bids opened on 1 July and can be made through to 31 August 2017.
Last year we had bids totalling well over £6million from groups and organisations across our network, so the fund is hotly contested, but we want as many ideas as possible from every area of our network.
CCIF supports schemes and projects associated with the railway and meeting a social need of benefit to the wider community. The projects must also be supported by our customers, who form part of the group assessing the bids. The guidance booklet on the website sets out the type of applications we are seeking, and also gives some information on those we would find it harder to support. We want to encourage bids from all areas of our network.
Bids for schemes that require on going funding will need to show how this will be secured without access to further CCIF funds. Bids of this nature are unlikely to succeed if there is a risk that they will fail to be delivered after the first year. We are keen to encourage all sorts of bids, some of the most successful are ones where the fund closes the gap where some funding has already been secured, or could be available from other sources. That said, we want to see innovative and creative bids of all sorts, as long as they meet the basic criteria.
Once bidding closes on 31 August, all bids will be fully reviewed by a shortlisting panel of customers, stakeholders and GWR’s Executive team. Schemes that are shortlisted will be visited to discuss proposals in more detail before final recommendations are put to the Department for Transport (DfT) for approval in the autumn.