Discover how we worked with our partners to facilitate community-led economic development.

 

About the work undertaken

For over two decades Cambridgeshire ACRE led an approach to rural economic development based around place-making and advocating the principles of the LEADER approach: bottom-up; integrated; inclusive and area-based; providing added value and offering value for money. We worked to engage the energy and resources of people and local organisations, empowering them to contribute to the future development of their rural area by forming area-based Local Action Groups (LAG) partnerships between the public, private and community and voluntary sectors. Local Action Group members and the community were directly involved in the development and delivery of local strategies, decision-making and funding allocations through grants to local projects.

Fenland was the only place in the Country where two LEADER programmes Wisbech Community-Led Local Development and Cambridgeshire Fens LEADER were successfully facilitated by the same accountable body (Cambridgeshire ACRE). Our expertise in developing place-based strategies; giving partnership support and empowering communities coupled with rigorous policies and procedures in place for public fund management led to much success.

Although EU programmes have now ended, similar programmes for addressing levelling-up, social mobility and NetZero are now being delivered by the UK government. We remain strong advocates of taking the learning from the LEADER approach forward, particularly enabling local communities to remain at the heart of addressing local needs and challenges. This can be achieved through strong partnership working with public, private and community and voluntary sectors; place-making in defining an area meaningful to those that work and live there and developing together an integrated local development strategy enabling funding investment.

 

What impact did our work have?

Wisbech CLLD (ran for 5 years to end Dec-2022)

• £0.92m grants available (of which £0.7m committed to date)
• 275 participants into education or training (against a target of 237)
• 219 participants into employment (against a target of 116)
• 256 participants into job search (against a target of 89)

Fens LEADER (ran for 5 years to end Dec 2020)

• £1.3m grants committed
• 75 jobs created

 

Testimonies from those involved

 

“Cambridgeshire ACRE have in my experience been excellent in providing the administrative and management support which these types of programmes require. In the LEADER programme for 2014-2020 every target was exceeded and the Cambridgeshire ACRE team were adept in ensuring that they engaged the community to ensure that programme take-up was maintained.”

 

“Cambridgeshire ACRE has taken the partnership lead on most of the projects that we have delivered which has enabled us to apply for funding for much needed projects that we would have been unable to deliver had we not taken a partnership approach, as we are a much smaller charity and do not have the infrastructure in place. The support from Cambridgeshire ACRE has been invaluable and enabled us to grow as a charity and provide a wider range of much needed services.”

 

“The approach to co-ordinating the submission for UKCRF which has been adopted by Cambridgeshire ACRE has been one of collaboration (building on the partnership approach of Wisbech CLLD and LEADER Programmes), this involves local organisations which have close links to the communities, in terms of delivery and communication this is invaluable. Because of this association with local delivery organisations, the suggested approach is very much bottom-up and anchored in the community, which will help to ensure that the provision will help to directly meet the needs of the beneficiaries”

 

 

Who can I talk to about this work?

Please contact Alison Brown, Head of Business Services on 01353 865029 or email alison.brown@cambsacre.org.uk.