New Active Communities Funding Programme

POEPLE'S Health Trust's new Active Communities Funding Programme aims to support local people to use their skills and knowledge to make their communities better places in which to grow, live, work and age.

Using money raised by HealthFit through The Health Lottery, the Trust will work with people living in the poorest neighbourhoods of St Helens, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton and the Wirral. The new programme aims to close the gap between those communities which experience the worst health in England, Scotland and Wales and the majority of the population.

The programme will focus on neighbourhoods where people living within them will, on average:-

► die 7 years younger than people living in richer neighbourhoods;

► spend 17 years more of their shortened lives with disability than people living in richer neighbourhoods;

► have higher rates of mental health problems;

► have a lower quality of life.

The Active Communities Funding Programme awards grants of between £5,000 and £25,000 to local community and voluntary organisations with an annual income of less than £200,000 a year, delivering small projects lasting up to 18 months, in the 25% most deprived neighbourhoods (based on the Indices of Multiple Deprivation) in Great Britain.

To be eligible to apply for funding from this local society lottery your project should be delivered in St Helens, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton or the Wirral.

Professor Jennie Popay, Chair – People's Health Trust, said:- "Through our new Active Communities Funding Programme, we're looking to support projects in the most deprived neighbourhoods in Great Britain that encourage community activism. We're interested in projects that are 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."

Chris Lunn, Director – HealthFit, said:- "We're delighted to see the money raised by HealthFit being used to support local people to address health inequalities at a local level."

To find out more about the Active Communities Funding Programme, or to find out if your organisation and project is eligible for funding through this programme, please visit:- peopleshealthtrust.org.uk. 

If you require further assistance or have any additional questions, please contact them via email or by telephone on:- 020 7697 4021.  The closing date for applications is 9am on 11 April 2013.

Davies bashes bankers' bonuses

MEASURES to limit the size of bankers' bonuses are long overdue, according to a Southport Euro-MP. New EU financial rules are to limit the bonuses that can be paid to bankers to 100% of their salary. MEPs and most European governments want to avoid the risk of more banking failures caused by short term thinking and greed. Liberal Democrat Chris Davies said that the measures will not be thought tough enough by most people. He said:- "A banker being paid £5 million a year could still get another £5 million on top of that just for doing his job. It's one thing to celebrate success, but quite another to support arrangements that brought Europe's economy to its knees." Davies criticised Chancellor George Osborne for trying to prevent any limits being introduced. Davies said:- "I'm delighted that it was a Liberal Democrat MEP who led the way in bringing in this measure, and equally delighted that our Conservative representatives were outvoted 26 to 1 by ministers from other countries. Bankers have behaved insanely, and yet walked off with their pockets full of money." The new EU financial rules require banks to hold greater sums of capital in reserve to reduce the risk of a collapse. "To those who say that these measures will damage Britain's financial industry, I invite them to remind us of the mind-boggling sums that we are now having to pay because of the scale of the problems that this industry has created."