BeConnected Highland

Highland Community Regeneration Funding

About the Fund

The Highland Council is responsible for delivering various external funding programmes to enable community-led local action. This allows community groups and organisations to apply for funding to deliver projects that respond to the needs of their local area and support positive change.

Community Regeneration Funding is an umbrella term used to cover multiple community-led external funding programmes.

Community Regeneration Funding is currently made up of:

  • Highland Coastal Communities Fund 
  • Place-Based Investment Programme 
  • Community-Led Local Development Fund

Highland Coastal Communities Fund and the Place Based Investment Programme are annual funding streams where the Scottish government allocates funding available to Highland Council.

Local Area Committees are awarded a proportion of the annual allocation from these funds based on an approved formula. This means each Local Area Committee has a budget to award to projects. Decision making on which projects are awarded funding is made by Local Area Committee Members.

The Community-Led Local Development Fund is a competitive Highland-wide funding programme for rural areas. The eligible programme area covers all of The Highland Council's geography except Badenoch and Strathspey, and Inverness City.

Decisions on which projects will receive funding are taken by the Highland Strategic Local Advisory Group. This group is made up of third sector representatives, public and private organisations

In Badenoch and Strathspey the Community-Led Local Development Fund is being delivered by the Cairngorms Trust (external link).

Register your Project Proposal

In the past, CRF has mainly been through open calls for projects, which inevitably have been oversubscribed leading to disappointment and frustration for a lot of applicants. As CRF moves away from open calls for projects, the first resource to inform the prioritisation of funds will be the BeConnected map.  Decision makers for CRF will be provided with information from the map on projects in their area that are eligible for each fund, and will consider which projects fit best with the outcomes of the fund.  Those invited to progress will be provided with feedback and asked to submit an Expression of Interest that outlines what stage of the development the project is at, along with some other key information.  Expressions of Interest will then be assessed and presented to decision making groups to select which should proceed to a full application.

In addition, there is an increasing move towards ensuring that projects being funded fit well with the outcomes in each area’s Area Based Plan (the plan for your area can be found HERE).

Please note that submitting a proposal on the map is not an application for funding.  Feedback will only be provided if your proposal is invited to proceed to the next stage.

We hope that BeConnected will:

  • Reduce the number of open calls for projects where groups have a short window to compete against each other for limited pots of money
  • Provide a rolling resource for funders to ensure that decision makers are aware of what projects are in development
  • Allow support to be targeted to projects at the right stage of their development
  • Provide a resource for targeting other means of support such as the in kind support available from developers
  • Declutter the funding landscape and reduce the burden of work for the third sector in competing for funding streams
  • Help the Council to plan future support and identify gaps where further work is needed
  • Allow groups to identify other similar projects being developed elsewhere in Highland to potentially build links for learning and sharing experiences

If you are a member of community group or organisation and you want to share your project on BeConnected, register as a group, activate your account* and then follow our step by step guide! 

*Please check your spam/ junk folder if you do not receive your activation email.