SSEN awards over £185,000 to communities to tackle vulnerability and improve resilience

Funding from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) is set to help twenty-two local community groups across central southern England to build their resilience and tackle issues of vulnerability.

This is the fifth year of SSEN's Resilient Communities Fund and during this time SSEN has provided £1.572 million of funding to 216 projects. Set up in 2014 as a two-year pilot scheme, SSEN has 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.

In its latest round of annual grants, SSEN's Resilient Communities Fund (RCF) is awarding over £185,000 to the successful applicants across its south network area.

The 2019/20 fund has extended its support to projects which achieve one of the following criteria:

• Vulnerability - to protect the welfare of vulnerable community members through enhancing their resilience and improving community participation and effectiveness.
• Resilience for Emergency Events - to enhance community facilities, services and communication specifically to support the local response in the event of a significant emergency event.

With this refreshed focus in mind, individual funding, reaching over £39,000 in one case, has been awarded to projects demonstrating how their communities will be enhanced by improving the welfare of those most vulnerable, expanding community facilities and supplying life-saving equipment.

Decisions for these awards have been made by a panel of representatives from the Environment Agency, Citizens Advice and National Energy Action, and their considerations will now benefit community groups and organisations from areas including Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Isle of Wight.

Lyndsey Stainton, Head of Stakeholder Engagement at SSEN said: "As the Resilient Communities Fund reaches its fifth year of funding vital community projects, it's heartening to see how many groups in this latest round have embraced the new criteria and been successful in their application."

"By taking a fresh look at the funding available and applying that to ideas and projects that can reduce the vulnerability of their community members, and our customers, we can see that this extended criteria will prove beneficial to so many of the areas in which SSEN operates."

"We've always said that our customers and communities are at the heart of all we do, and through the Resilient Communities Fund we are helping to empower them to build stronger communities now and for the years to come."

Paul Bright, CEO of Citizens Advice Hampshire added: "At Citizens Advice we pride ourselves in helping people with whatever problems they have; be it financial, housing, with relationships or many other issues. We tend to help the most vulnerable in our society who turn to us in times of crisis."

"It has been both refreshing and rewarding to work alongside Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks to the benefit of our communities across central southern England. The awards help to provide practical solutions to those in most need."

In addition to the Resilient Communities Fund, SSEN has been working closely with local communities in the south east of England, helping them create resilience plans for emergencies, such as adverse weather and possible power disruption during winter storms.

SSEN's Resilient Communities Fund will re-open for applications in the spring of 2020. To find out more about the fund, please visit the website: www.ssen.co.uk/Resiliencefund/. To check who your network operator is and to see if you would be eligible for funding through SSEN's Resilient Communities Fund, please visit ssen.co.uk/whoismynetworkoperator.

A full list of recipients from this latest round of SSEN funding can be seen in the table below.