Community groups across Wrexham benefiting from Big Lottery Funding

Community groups and charitable causes in Wrexham are reaping the benefits of lottery funding.

The Big Lottery Fund is the largest community funder in the UK and over the summer months, Wrexham-based organisations have shared almost £12,000.

Many of the Big Lottery grants support local charities run by volunteers and Wrexham’s Assembly Member, Lesley Griffiths, is hoping even more organisations apply for funding in future.

In total, three projects have received Big Lottery funding in the past few months via the ‘Awards for All’ category.

Wrexham Retired Members Association secured almost £2,000 to fund a series of trips to help reduce social isolation. Cunliffe Bowling Club will use their grant of £5,000 to install an automated watering system and the Wrexham Warehouse Project’s £5,000 grant will expand the motor vehicle training programme, which is available to vulnerable young people.

Big Lottery has recently relaunched the small and large grants programme with a focus on people-led community projects.

‘Awards for All’ have increased the maximum grants size to £10,000, with a quicker application process of 3 months and a widened scope of community, health, educational and environmental projects.

‘People & Places’ now offers grants of between £10,001 and £500,000, and focuses on spreading funds across Wales through simple and quicker applications of between 3 and 8 months (down from 12 months).

Commenting on the scheme, Ms Griffiths said: ““For a number of years, Big Lottery funding has had a positive impact across Wrexham.

“A wide range of local causes have secured hundreds of thousands of pounds in total and with the parameters of the grant programmes recently changing, I am hopeful many more groups and organisations will benefit in future.”