Some of the most useful money in a community is the smallest. Beyond Housing, the housing association that operates across the Teesside and North Yorkshire coast, has reopened its Community Fund, offering grants of up to £1,000 to grassroots groups. As The Scarborough News reported, the deadline for applications is 5pm on Friday 14 August.
Who can apply, and for what
The fund is open to charities, voluntary and community groups, residents’ associations and other not-for-profit organisations based in the areas Beyond Housing serves, including Redcar, Scarborough, Whitby and the surrounding communities. This year’s theme is keeping communities safe and strengthening cohesion within neighbourhoods, so the sort of projects it is built for are the practical, local ones: a safer play area, a group that brings neighbours together, a scheme that helps people look out for each other.
Small grants, real reach
It is easy to overlook a fund handing out sums this size when the news is full of billion-pound frameworks and garden villages. That would be a mistake. For a small community group run by volunteers, £1,000 is often the difference between an idea and an actual thing that happens. As Beyond Housing notes, its Community Fund backed 21 local projects last year alone. Money that lands directly with the people doing the work, with no vast bureaucracy attached, tends to go a very long way.
What good landlords do
There is a wider point here about what a housing association is for. Beyond Housing owns and manages homes, but a fund like this recognises that a good neighbourhood is more than its bricks. Backing the groups that keep coastal towns like Redcar and Whitby ticking over, the ones that rarely make headlines, is exactly the kind of quiet, rooted investment the North runs on. If you know a group on that coast that could use the money, the clock is running to 14 August.
The North is FU7URE’s daily briefing on the people, capital and infrastructure reshaping the North of England. Subscribe to the free newsletter to get it in your inbox each morning.
Leave a Reply