Customer and Community Improvement Fund, 2023/4 - From yesterday's
GWR▸ update
422 bids received, totalling £11 million requested. All monies (£800,000) now awarded, spread over 53 projects, all expenditure to be completed by the end of the current financial year. It's hinted that there will be a similar scheme next year, opening for bids at the start of the next financial year, and a concentration on there being a rail connection with bids.
Some thoughts from me.
1. It is good to have funding flows such as these for community projects, helping to engage the railway with the communities it passes through.
2. With under 13% of bids being sucessful, and with only 7% of the funding bid for being awarded, this strikes me as a spectacularly inefficent system - the amount of effort put into failed bids is phenomenal. If I were still running a company I would be very reluctant indeed to bid on those odds; it would be a waste of time and money to do so. And I note from the numbers that the system has created over 350 disappointed groups and organisations.
3. With bidding in the early summer, awards into the autmn and expenditure requre to be completed by next Easter, this is very much short term implementation of projects - hardly seems the best way for something sponsored by the rail indusrty where projects are often ongoing. "Scramble to spend" typically does not make for the wisest or best outcomes; I would like to see "right rather than rushed".
That said, bids from organisations that are part of that organisation's long term thoughts and objectives can be very helpful to that organisation in having them think about what they are doing and how they are seen by others. The act of putting a bid together can in itself help publicise the organisation and project an help motivate it and move it forward, even if the
CCIF▸ bid is not successful.
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