Warrington backs scheme to support “left behind” communities

WARRINGTON Borough Council is backing a call for a Community Wealth Fund – a proposal for a new, independent endowment to invest in the most “left behind” neighbourhoods in the country.

In supporting the proposal, Warrington has joined an alliance of more than 370 organisations from civil society and the public and private sectors, supporting the call for significant investment to enable communities to transform their neighbourhoods. There are 24 councils supporting the Community Wealth Fund.
The fund would take a radically different approach to most funding bodies, with communities at a neighbourhood level supported to take spending decisions. Awards would be made to each community to spend over the long term (10-15 years), building community resilience and strength and increasing their confidence and capacity to turn their areas around.
Warrington has one ward that the Community Wealth Fund would prioritise for investment – Poplars and Hulme with a population of 12,735.
This ward is also one of the areas covered by the Central 6 Regeneration Masterplan, which was developed during 2019 with input from over 2,500 residents and sets out a 25-year visionth aiming to make the Central 6 wards cleaner, greener and healthier and ensure residents are fully linked to the economic prosperity of the borough.
As a part of the Central 6 Plan, residents said they wanted to see improvements in local transport and places to meet, such as community facilities.
The Community Wealth Fund aligns with residents’ aspirations for their areas, as it would provide long-term investment to residents,enabling them to develop and design services and facilities that best fit their needs.The alliance is calling on government to make the proposal a reality by releasing the next wave of dormant, or orphaned, assets from stocks, shares, bonds,insurance and pension policies to create an endowment.
Close to£900m is likely to be available initially through the expansion of the dormant assets scheme beyond bank and building society accounts.The proposal has the support of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for “left behind” neighbourhoods.
The Group was set up to find policy solutions to improve the social and economic prospects of the 225 most deprived wards in the country and those with the least community provision and poor local transport.
Cllr Tony Higgins, Warrington’s cabinet member for leisure and community, said: “The work of the Community Wealth Fund is strongly linked to our Central 6 Masterplan and our ambitions to provide better facilities, support and investment in our inner wards. We want to ensure that al lour communities have the opportunities to thrive in our town and initiatives like the Community Wealth Fund could unlock genuine, tangible long-term benefits for our residents.
“I am very pleased to see the council’s name alongside other local authorities, foundations and organisations in calling for this vital funding which could further improve the infrastructure, facilities and opportunities of Poplars and Hulme and beyond.”