Mid Ulster Council release £100k for community regeneration

Mid Ulster District Council’s policy and resources committee has approved the release of £100,000 from its reserves to be added to this year’s capital discretionary grant to help fund five community regeneration capital projects.

The £100,000 in question had been returned to the council’s reserves as it was part of last year’s capital discretionary grant that was not spent due to Covid-19 and a delay in the ability for groups/clubs to fundraise for the development of their community facilities.

Each year the discretionary fund has a budget allocation of £150,000.

This additional £100,000 will take the total allocated to clubs from the capital discretionary grant programme this year to £250,000.

The maximum award for each project is £50,000.

Members of the committee were advised that five projects have successfully applied for and been assessed as meeting the threshold to be eligible for discretionary grant funding.

At last month’s meeting of the council’s development committee it was agreed to approve the five schemes for capital funding due to the impact they will have on their local communities and the match funding secured of £2,195,000 represents a return of 9:1 in the development of local facilities.

However, this approval was dependant on the policy and resources committee approving the release of the extra funds.

The five projects are: Clonoe Rural Developments’ new full size football pitch; Clogher Valley Rugby Club’s upgrade of club premises/grounds; Moortown GAC’s upgrade of changing facilities and a community gym; Dungannon Swifts’ new 3G pitch and Naomh Colm Cille’s fencing, ballway, walkway and pitch upgrade.

A proposal to approve the release of these funds was put forward by Councillor Phelim Gildernew and seconded by Councillor Sean McGuigan before the proposal was endorsed by the entire committee.

Speaking at September’s meeting of the development committee, Councillor Barry Monteith proposed all five projects were awarded funding subject to the approval of the policy and resources committee and said it was only right this money should be spent to help these clubs meet their aims and ambitions.

“The reason these groups have not been able to get spending the money in the last few years is due to the pandemic and they should not be penalised for that,” he said.

“It was hard enough for groups to keep going and put projects together in the middle of all that.

“The whole ethos of the funding in the first place was to be as accommodating as possible.”