Community Assets: The essential update by Steven Shanahan It is now over three weeks since Community Assets opened and interest is very high. We’ve been getting far more phone calls and emails than normal as a result of this. Many of these have been fairly complex. Due to this increase, it has been taking us longer than usual to reply. Sorry if you’ve been affected by this and do please bear with us. We have also been getting lots of questions that are unfortunately a less good fit with Community Assets. Based on the budget for this funding, we are only expecting to fund between 10 and 15 communities over the next year. It means the level of competition for grants will be very high. We will in turn only encourage requests that will very strongly address inequality or disadvantage. What we’re less likely to consider Although we realise the benefits of the work of these organisations, we’ve found a harder case for applying might be from: Sports groups delivering sports only activities Scout groups Heritage focused Men’s sheds Play parks or park improvements Community Councils Churches (when the church will still own it) Car parks From all organisations, requests we are less likely to consider are: General refurbishment A lease (unless exceptional circumstances are involved) A building that will only be used for headquarters