To ask the Minister for Communities to detail the amount of funding provided by her Department to community and voluntary organisations in East Londonderry in each of the last five years.

The Government Funding Database which is publicly accessible at https://govfundingpublic.nics.gov.uk holds records of applications from and funding to voluntary and community sector organisations here.

Annex 1 provides details of funding recorded as having been allocated to groups in the East Derry constituency by the Department for Communities in the last five years via a range of commissioning methods and approaches. These include existing funding frameworks, match funding to local government community development programmes and a number of regional partnerships.

The GFD is a live database and is regularly updated. There have been some delays by funding organisations to update GFD due to Covid and as such there is an ongoing reconciliation exercise by partners.

You may find it helpful to search the database to obtain details of funding awarded to specific organisations registered within the noted area. Please note, information within the database is held according to the registered address of the organisation, which may not correspond to the location of the group benefitting from the funding awarded.

To mitigate the impact of Covid-19, my Department has also worked in partnership with stakeholders to provide financial and practical support to Culture, Languages, the Arts, Heritage, Sport, Charities, Social Enterprise and the Voluntary and Community Sectors. This information is not currently available at parliamentary constituency level.

For the Covid-19 Charities and Social Enterprise Funds where information is available at local government district level, I have provided details of funding awarded for both Causeway Coast and Glens and Derry City and Strabane District Council areas at Annex 2. For Covid-19 funding support covering sports, culture, languages, arts and heritage I have provided links (also in Annex 2) where further information is available.

In addition to publicly available schemes, my Department has also distributed funding directly to Councils. Some of this funding may have been allocated in the East Derry constituency and each Council would be able to provide details.

Annex 1

Funding allocated to Groups in the East Derry constituency

Annex 2

Covid-19 Charities Fund

Social Enterprise Fund

For Covid-19 funding support covering sports, culture, languages, arts and heritage further information can be found through the links below.

Sports Sustainability Fund

http://www.sportni.net/funding/our-funding-programmes/sports-sustainability-fund/sports-sustainability-fund-awards-list/

During 2020/21, the Department also secured £1 million to provide over 2,000 Covid Safe PPE packs to sports clubs across the north. Sport NI has provided 61 PPE packs to clubs in the East Derry area.

Covid-19 Culture, Languages, Arts & Heritage

The web link provides details of funding which has been distributed through a number of delivery partners. This information will be updated shortly to include a list of all successful grant recipients

COVID-19 Culture, Languages, Arts and Heritage Support Programme 2020-2021 (communities-ni.gov.uk)

Heritage Recovery Fund

https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/news/northern-ireland-heritage-road-recovery-thanks-ps528million-funding