UK Shared Prosperity Communities and Place Fund

• To strengthen our social fabric and foster a sense of local pride and belonging, through investment in activities that enhance physical, cultural, and social ties and access to amenities, such as community infrastructure and local green space, and community-led projects.​ 
• To build resilient, healthy, and safe neighbourhoods, through investment in quality places that people want to live, work, play and learn in, through targeted improvements to the built and natural environment and innovative approaches to crime prevention. 

• Place based investments for regeneration and town centre improvements, which could include better accessibility for disabled people, including capital spend and running costs. 
• Support and improvement of community assets and infrastructure projects, including those that increase communities’ resilience to natural hazards, such as flooding, and support for decarbonisation of facilities, energy efficiency audits, and installation of energy efficiency and renewable measures in community buildings (including capital spend and running costs). 
• Support for sports, arts, cultural, heritage and creative activities, project and facilities and institutions. 
• Funding to support relevant feasibility studies. 
• Funding for the development and promotion of wider campaigns which encourage people to visit and explore the local area. 
• Investment in capacity building, resilience (including climate change resilience) and infrastructure support for local civil society and community groups. 

• Improving community spaces – accessibility for disabled/elderly. 
• Improving the physical health and wellbeing of people – improvement to facilities and open/green spaces. 
• Tourism being a key economic priority – promotion of the area to visitors and locals to explore and support the local economy. 
• Accelerating transition to net-zero – identifying and installing green technology solutions to reduce operating costs of facilities and identifying options to improve energy efficiency in community buildings. 

In particular, there is an opportunity for UKSPF to support:  

1. Regeneration and recreational facilities: Projects which attract visitors to existing and new local sites. This could include outdoor amenities, sporting facilities, community programmes, cultural/heritage sites, or creative arts based projects. The aim would be to boost tourism and create jobs; particularly targeted within regeneration areas, and to increase positive and healthy leisure provision for a growing population.  
2. Accessibility: Projects which enhance accessibility to facilities and services for the elderly and disabled population. These actions would increase users of facilities and improve access to opportunities within our communities. As well as physical alteration of community buildings to improve accessibility, revenue support could be utilised to ensure sustainable provision of services.  
3. Climate: Projects which support the net-zero transition. There are many actions which we can utilise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as energy efficiency measures and feasibility studies - projects which are reasonably straightforward to implement. However, there is still a lack of human resource to coordinate and deliver climate actions which benefit the community; it is therefore likely this intervention will also include revenue support to build capacity so that across the City organisations are well placed to access relevant opportunities to transition to net-zero.     

• The UKSPF is a multi-annual fund with the opportunity to fund a project over more than one financial year. Applicants should consider that all expenditure must be incurred by 31 March 2025. 
• The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is mainly a revenue programme. Government guidance states that between 80% and 90% of funding available through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund is revenue funding, with a small amount of capital funding (rising from 10% in the first year to 20% in the final). We are currently only accepting capital applications. 

• Match funding is not mandatory and the UKSPF may fund up to 100% of the costs. However, the Government encourages applicants to maximise leverage of other funding, where appropriate. This includes other government funding where relevant. This will be assessed as part of the value for money considerations. 
• Applicants can also apply for Aberdeen City Council’s Placed Based Investment Programme along with UK Shared Prosperity Communities and Place Fund, if necessary