Aberdeenshire has been awarded £8.3 million from the UK government's Shared Prosperity Fund.

The fund is a central pillar of the Levelling Up agenda and provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment across the UK by March 2025, replacing the European funds from 2023 onwards.

Its aim is to build pride in place and increase life chances across the UK, aiming to empower places to invest in local priorities with the Aberdeenshire Council bid focusing on communities and place, local businesses and people and skills.

Funds will also be allocated to a number of multi-annual programmes which will provide grants to a wide range of community, private and public organisations to deliver specific projects.

Under the proposals, more than £2.6milllion allocated to Communities and Place including regeneration and town centre improvements, support and improvement of community assets and infrastructure projects and improvements to the natural environment and green and open space.

It's also focused on building resilient, healthy and safe neighbourhoods, through targeted improvements to the built environment, active travel enhancements and other small scale strategic transport projects and community measures to reduce the cost of living.

Similar investment in Local Businesses will aim to create jobs and boost community cohesion, through funding business advice services, entrepreneurship programmes and enterprise infrastructure and employment/innovation site development projects.  In addition, funding will be available to grow the local social economy through supporting the creation of new and diversification of existing social enterprises.

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The People and Skills programme will receive more than £2.7million to boost core skills and support adults to progress in work, including targeting adults with no or low level qualifications and skills in maths, upskilling the working population and encouraging innovative approaches to reducing adult learning barriers.

Another key priority will be reducing levels of economic inactivity through investment in employment support programmes tailored to local need. Projects will also support people furthest from the labour market to overcome barriers to work by providing cohesive, locally tailored support including access to basic skills, while also addressing gaps in local skills provision.

Aberdeenshire Council Leader Cllr Mark Findlater said: "As a council we want to ensure that the £8.3 million in Shared Prosperity funding which has been allocated to Aberdeenshire makes a very positive impact in the long term. Combined with the significant funding support we already provide to residents and businesses, these additional monies will play a key role in making a big difference across the north-east."

Deputy Leader Cllr Anne Stirling added: "Not only will this funding support the development of our communities and local infrastructure, it will also improve our wonderful natural environment, our built and landscaped environment and support businesses and social enterprises to develop across Aberdeenshire. This is a tremendous opportunity for the region and I would encourage our communities and business sector to make contact with our Economic Development officers to discuss their expressions of interest as soon as possible."

Paul Macari, Head of Planning and Economy at Aberdeenshire Council, said: "The Shared Prosperity Fund will provide a significant level of investment in Aberdeenshire in the coming years. There are a wide range of potential uses for the funds which can add value to existing funding programmes and we need to ensure that resources are targeted as effectively as possible and focus on delivering against local priorities."

If you are working on a project which you think fits within any of the priority areas, apply for an expression of interest form by emailing [email protected] and return this to us by 9am on May 22nd.

If your project meets the criteria of the fund, we will send you an application form to complete along with scoring frameworks for each theme, outlining definition of terms, outputs and outcomes. Please submit your application form by 9am on June 19th.