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Scarman Trust seeks £3m transition for Community Champions

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 1 Dec 2007

The Scarman Trust has asked charities minister Phil Hope for £3m to fund a programme of transition for the Community Champions Fund, following the government’s decision to axe the scheme from March 2008.

The Community Champions Fund was set up in 2000 by David Blunkett to give grants of up to £2,000 to help people in England start up projects in their communities, particularly in deprived neighbourhoods.

However, earlier this year the Department for Children, Schools and Families decided to close the scheme as part of a move to devolve funding to local authorities.

The Scarman Trust, one of the partner organisations which delivered the Fund, is campaigning to safeguard it. It wants £3m to work with pioneering local authorities to find a way of continuing support for community projects at a local level.

Hope told Charity News Alert he was waiting for more detail of the transition proposals. “They were very persuasive as to the value of the Community Champions programme,” he said, but added he could “not make any promises” as to the likelihood of securing further funding.

Last week David Blunkett came out in support of the Trust’s campaign at an event for community leaders organised by the Scarman Trust. “I think we need to reinvent, seeing as the government has done away with it, the Community Champions programme,” said Blunkett.

He said the government should not rule out funding a few projects centrally. Its recent moves in this direction meant that other schemes such as the Neighbourhood Programme and Millennium Volunteers no longer existed as they did.

There is concern at the Scarman Trust that people with ideas for projects in their community may be unwilling to apply to their local government for funding, particularly if they have had negative experiences of local authority in the past.

Lawrence Hoo, a former community champion who used his grant to produce a book of poetry about inner city life in Bristol, said local authorities would be unwilling to fund something that highlighted their inadequacies. “That is my big worry about them funding this thing,” he said.  

“That’s why we need people who are independent who can fund it independently with no strings attached.”

The Can Do event at which Blunkett spoke was the last taking place under the Scarman Trust name, following the charity’s merger last month with Novas and PATH to form the Novas Scarman Group.  

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