As the country returns to normal after the recent snow and freezing temperatures, communities in central southern England are being urged to take advantage of a competitive fund designed to help them improve their community resilience before applications close on Tuesday 15 May.

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has opened the 2018 round of its Resilient Communities Fund with £220,000 available for non-profit making organisations, community groups and charities working in the area covered by SSEN's distribution network in central southern England.

The opening of this most recent round of funding follows the issue of over £1m to more than 400 community resilience projects in central southern of England in the last three years, with 36 local communities receiving a share of nearly £250,000 from the latest round of awards.

Applications for the funding are all considered by an independent panel.

SSEN's Resilient Communities Fund supports local projects that:

  • Protect the welfare of vulnerable community members through enhancing their resilience and improving community participation and effectiveness
  • Enhance community facilities, services and communication - particularly to support local response to a significant emergency event.

Gareth Shields, Community Investment Manager for SSEN, said: "We are looking forward to this round of the fund and want to encourage communities who have not applied before to come forward with their resilience projects. We are also looking for projects which are truly innovative in their approach to resilience, and urge communities to think outside the box to come up with genuinely innovative solutions to the issues they face. A great example of this innovative thinking can be found in the rural Wiltshire community of Monkton Farleigh, where the parish council purchased a snow blade with their grant; as you can imagine it has been put to great use over the past few weeks."

Lisa Doogan, Director of Customer Relationship Management at SSEN, added: "Our Resilient Communities Fund gives us a great opportunity to help our communities prepare for winter weather and emergency situations, boosting their resilience to prepare for any challenges they may face.

"We are committed to supporting our local communities all year round, particularly during power cuts and extreme weather events, but we also want to help customers living in our cities, towns and villages build their own local resilience too."

Initially run as a pilot, SSEN pledged to extend the fund to 2023 using a proportion of the income it receives from the industry regulator Ofgem in relation to its stakeholder engagement performance, allowing funding in the region of £2m to be distributed to community-led groups and charities in the south of England.

To find out more about the SSEN Resilient Communities Fund, or to download an application form, visit: ssen.co.uk/resiliencefund.

To check who your network operator is and to see if you would be eligible for funding, please visit ssen.co.uk/whoismynetworkoperator.