Newport residents, community groups and projects are being encouraged to take part in the latest round of Newport’s participatory budgeting scheme, Our Voice, Our Choice, Our Port.

The scheme launched earlier this year and saw 24 community groups and projects receive a share of the £103,000 available in the initial round.

Applications for the second round of the scheme are now open. The council has allocated £250,000 from our Covid-19 recovery fund for this round of the scheme. This allocation is for community groups to develop community-based Covid recovery projects.

A further £165,000 has been made available by Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, taking the total available in this round to £415,000.

Community groups and projects can bid for up to £15,000 to help support an idea or project that helps meet one of the scheme’s key themes:

Mental Health and Wellbeing
Community Cohesion
Information and access
Back to life
Building resilience

Residents can vote for the projects which matter most to them at engagement events in February and March. Funding from the budget will be allocated to projects according to the vote share.

Councillor Jane Mudd, leader of the council, said: “Participatory budgeting is an excellent way of empowering residents to take decisions on what matters to them.

“We had great engagement from our community earlier this year during the initial round, and I’m sure we will see the same involvement this time.

“Although the pandemic has been tough for all of us, it has been heartening to see the response of groups and grass roots projects that have emerged to help our community through the worst of it.

“We want to support those groups and projects as much as possible, and I’m pleased therefore to be able to commit this funding to the scheme.”

To support interested groups, there will be application surgeries and video making assistance from Mutual Gain, a company experienced in bringing together participatory budgeting events across the UK.