What is the fund about?
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a key aspect of the UK government’s Levelling Up agenda. This will provide £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase opportunities across the UK.
The fund will:
- invest in communities and place
- support local:
- business
- people
- skills
For more information, please see the UKSPF prospectus.
Background
Southend has received £1.3 million for core UKSPF funding. We have already engaged with a wide range of local partners to write our investment plan. This sets out the local aims for UKSPF funding. In the future, we are responsible for:
- sending out the call for applications
- assessing applications
- paying grants to successful applicants
- managing and monitoring successful projects
Call Outcome
On 16 December 2022 we launched our first call for projects. These are projects eligible for funding until March 2024. In this round we were looking for projects which either provided:
- volunteering or social action
- support to the local entrepreneurial ecosystem
So far we have funded:
All of these are funded until the end of March 2024. Details of these projects can be found on the next few pages.