We have also distributed more than £450,000 of Council grants in support for heating, food and bills, other assistance, which has reached approximately 4,000 people in need. This relationship has gone from strength to strength, allowing us to develop our systems and receive further requests to support grant giving initiatives. It has also enabled us to establish ourselves as a bigger grant giver in the borough, with more and more local groups looking to us for vital programme support.
We shifted to a system that allowed local people to have a say in where this money goes. This led to our first ever Community Grants Panel to be created and fully trained in 2021, consisting of six residents from borough who supported in distributing funding for Covid responses as well as period poverty. The benefits of community involvement are clear to see and as a result is an area we are looking to grow.