Shared Prosperity Fund

The Cheshire West and Chester Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) Investment Plan, approved by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, sets out identified priorities which we are looking to support, within the parameters of the Government's funding criteria. These aim to address the key challenges and opportunities that ourselves and our local stakeholders identified, namely:

• levelling up opportunity
• building better live chances
• improving people's pride in the places they live
• empowering communities to build a stronger social fabric for themselves

Project activity in 2025-2026

To ensure that we had a transparent and fair approach to how this funding will be allocated, both within the Council and by external organisations, we held two open call for proposals for project activity taking place between April 2023 and March 2025. These covered the main agreed themes of supporting heritage, arts, impactful volunteering, capacity building and social infrastructure and funding to support relevant regeneration feasibility studies.

As 2025-26 is one-off transition funding, at a level 50% less than in previous year and with longer-term arrangements only being confirmed following the comprehensive spending review in the summer, Members agreed that a degree of continuity is best way of delivering existing investment plans, priorities and targeted outcomes rather than having an open call within the Communities and Place allocation. Projects supported under the transition year support the most vulnerable and work at the grass roots level and we also taken into consideration the level of previous funding, so that smaller projects, especially those who may have only had funding for a one-year pilot, were prioritised over organisations which have previously received more substantial levels of resource.