The charity that distributes the money raised by the Health Lottery has launched a new funding programme that focuses on those neighbourhoods whose inhabitants have the worst health in England, Scotland and Wales.

The new People’s Health Trust grants will be available to locally-based charities and community groups with income of £200,000 a year or less.

The Active Communities Funding Programme aims to “help close the health gap between rich and poor”, by allocating grants to those communities where the people living in them will, on average:

• Die seven years younger than people living in richer neighbourhoods
• Be disabled for 17 more years than their counterparts in richer areas
• Have higher rates of mental health problems; and
• Have a lower quality of life.

The fund’s criteria requires that projects are based and operate within one of the local areas of the 51 society lotteries that make up the Health Lottery, and run by local organisations that have annual income of £200,000 or less and no more than six months’ worth of unrestricted reserves.

Grants will range from £5,000 to £25,000 for projects that last up to 18 months.

The new programme should go some way to making the distribution of Health Lottery funding more local in its nature.  When the grantmaking charity, the People’s Health Trust, first began allocating funds raised by the lottery last year, it partnered with ten national charities which had individual local charities or associated charities in many of the regions covered by the lottery. This meant that these organisations, which included Mencap, WRVS and Alzheimer’s Society, received multiple grants to roll out specific projects across multiple regions.

The People’s Health Trust said it did this because it wanted to get funding out quickly, and then it launched a consultation on future grants programmes.

Prof Jennie Popay, chair of the People’s Health Trust (pictured), said the Active Communities programme would support projects that “encourage community activism”.

“We will support projects designed by local people that address issues relevant to them and benefit and improve their local community.  We want to support local people to use their skills and knowledge to make their communities better places in which to grow, to live, to work and to age.”