Voluntary groups given council lifeline

Grants ranging from £7000 to £25,000 were awarded to voluntary groups covering a range of issues including adult learning, arts and culture, children's services, community, health and regeneration.

Up to £400,000 has also been provisionally set aside for a further 17 groups which, although meeting the criteria, cannot claim any cash until they hear the outcome of other funding decisions, such as the Big Lottery Fund and the Government's own Transition Fund or are subject to ongoing consultation at the council. These groups will automatically be entered into a second wave of funding which will be announced in the next few months. The second wave will also be opened up to all groups which have not yet been awarded grants.

In total over two years up to £1.5m will be available from the fund, with £1m earmarked for this year and £500,000 next. Cabinet member for equalities and communities, Cllr Abdul Mohamed, said: "I was impressed by the quality of the successful applications, and it is clear that many organisations have risen to the challenge of developing new ways of working in our more austere times, in order to focus their work on those people who rely on the extremely important work carried out by the voluntary sector.

"We were hit hard by the government's funding settlement, and as a result need to make savings of over £60m over two years. But in order to try and nurture our most vital voluntary groups we created the Transition Fund to ensure they could survive the budget cuts while they developed long term and sustainable ways of working.

"We ran this first wave of funding at breakneck speed, as that's what those groups which faced funding shortfalls from early April asked us to do, in order to help them. I would urge those groups which have not been successful this time or not automatically entered into the second wave, to apply again as judging by what we've seen so far there's loads of ideas out there, which with a bit of thought and an injection of cash can take off."

Chris Sanford, chief executive at Community Action Southwark, who sat on the awarding panel, said: "It was very tough choosing as it was so over-subscribed and there were lots of good ideas. But what really set those that were successful apart was that they had developed some really exciting proposals for the future, which I'm looking forward to seeing coming on stream as soon as possible.

"A lot of groups will automatically go straight through to the second round as they're just awaiting funding decisions from other sources, and we'd be happy to work with any remaining groups which need a bit of extra help to develop their initial ideas further."

Unsuccessful applicants can reapply to additional waves when they're opened up, and will be given feedback on their original applications. Adult day centres and lunch clubs are also set to receive a total of £475,000 from additional contingency funding to keep existing contracts running until August.

The purpose of the Voluntary Sector Transition Fund is not to replace lost funding or cover running costs for existing service delivery, but to enable organisations to become more sustainable in the current climate and includes:

Development of fundraising strategies/funding bids
Support with business plan development
Enabling development of mergers and collaborations
Enabling sharing of back office costs/shared services
Development of initiatives that will support third sector organisations to engage with the personalisation agenda
New models of service provision/innovation/ doing it more effectively and efficiently/ and realising savings