Voluntary and community safety groups across Essex could receive a funding boost following the relaunch of the PCC’s Community Safety Development Fund.

The £300,000 fund offers grants of up to £20,000 for community projects that help to prevent and tackle crime and anti-social behaviour in Essex.

Previous recipients of the grants have included Essex Girls and Boys Club, Lads Need Dads, Thurrock Youth Services, Teen Talk and Home Start Essex.

Roger Hirst, Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex, said: “Across Essex we have a huge number of voluntary and community groups helping to build safe and secure communities.

"These local groups working within their communities and solving local problems make a huge contribution and deserve to be supported.

“Empowering local communities, supporting innovation and rewarding those groups that achieve practical results at a grass roots level is an important way to keep our county safe and our communities strong and resilient.

“I would like to encourage anybody who is making a difference in their communities and feel they could benefit from additional funding to apply for this fund, but I would also like to thank all of those groups who work tirelessly in their communities to make difference."

Applications to the fund will need to demonstrate that they will make a positive impact on at least one of the Police and Crime Plan Priorities.

Decisions will be made by a panel of independent local representatives to ensure applications reflect specific community priorities and work with other existing commissioned or grant-funded activity and provide good value for money for the tax payer.

In order to ensure initiatives align with local priorities and existing activity applicants are also required to engage with their local Community Safety Partnerships.

Funding applications will be assessed during two panel sessions with the first funding round closing on Friday September 29 and the second round at the end of January 2018.

Sue Pell from Essex Girls and Boys Club who received funding in 2016- 2017 said: “We are extremely grateful for the funding we have received from the PCC Community Fund to support our Respect Programme.

"It is great to work with a Funder who supports an early intervention programme that helps young people look at things in a different way and gives them an opportunity to achieve something they never thought they would – either through challenging outdoor adventure or being supported through some of life’s difficulties around peer pressure, anger, communication or just appreciating the value of their education.

“The application process is reasonably straight forward. The monitoring and evaluation was very simple and you feel supported by the Team from the PCC who realise the value for money in putting in measures at an early stage in a young person’s life, rather than having the cost to society later on when that young person hasn’t got sufficient education to find employment or falls into anti-social behaviour – the cost then to society is enormous.” 

The fund is open for bids now; interested applicants can find out more information, including the fund criteria and application form, on the PCC’s website.