Down a dark, cobbled alleyway in Wigan town centre is The Brick, a homeless shelter and hive of activity. It was founded by the energetic and admirable Trish Green, a woman with a habit of taking on new challenges.
The charity already runs one of the borough's busiest food banks. Now Trish is planning a new venture giving people skills to help them get jobs. She's setting up a social enterprise providing training opportunities for the long-term unemployed, people with mental health issues and those who have just been released from prison.
It's Trish's latest challenge and I'm pleased to say Wigan Council is playing a major part in making it a reality. Through our Community Investment Fund, we've awarded the project £160,000.
The investment fund was set-up to help our communities help themselves. The official term is building self-reliance. Or, to put it another way, thanks to the new financial reality confronting local government, Wigan Council can no longer afford to do some of the work we might have done in the past or get involved in some of the vital projects we want to see in our communities.
When the age of austerity began for local authorities, and the government handed us a raft of new responsibilities without any additional money to pay for them, it became obvious if we wanted to see important but non-obligatory work take place in Wigan Borough, we had to find sustainable and affordable ways of funding it. The most obvious solution was to look for answers within our communities.
We set-up the Community Investment Fund because we want residents to take on more of a role in solving some of our most serious social issues and coming up with practical solutions. We've committed £2m to the fund – made up from the council's reserves. Finding the money has been tough, but this is something we believe we cannot afford not to do.
In the summer we asked for applications. If we were ever concerned about the appetite for such a scheme or the quality of the ideas we would receive, such worries quickly disappeared. More than 100 applications were received with a total value of £16m, way beyond what we could afford.
That meant we faced some extremely difficult decisions. Each of the applicants were offered the opportunity to attend a workshop to develop their proposal before submitting a full bid. Then a panel, made up councillors and senior council staff, picked the projects to get investment.
The criteria was broad but each successful bid had to tackle a social issue, build self-reliance and address one of our priority areas. Thirteen projects were successful. Along with The Brick, a community farm and a music cooperative were among the successful applicants.
Greenslate Community farm has been granted £90,000 which it will use to open a ‘care farm' to help treat people with mental and physical problems. Music group 21:12 has been given £190,000 to pay for its work with disadvantaged young people.
Each of the 13 projects has the potential to make a real difference in our communities and offer real solutions to problems facing people in the borough. I'm excited to see how they will develop and am convinced they will make Wigan Borough a better place.
In some ways we'd prefer not to be in this position. But councils must face the new reality. If we are to continue to support our communities, we have to find new ways of doing that.
Donna Hall is chief executive of Wigan Council
