A new initiative to help rural communities keep hold of key services will be launched at the Castle Green Hotel in Kendal on Friday, 25th February.
CRISP, the Cumbria Rural Infrastructure Support Programme, will spend £855,000 over the next three years helping Cumbrians find innovative ways of creating or securing services in rural communities.
Funded by Cumbria County Council and Rural Regeneration Cumbria, CRISP aims to support schemes like the Storth Post office project which saw residents of the South Lakeland village save their post office from closure by turning it into a community run venture and the Cyber Moor scheme which has brought computers and broadband connections to the villagers of Alston in the Eden Valley.
These projects were set up before CRISP started but are excellent examples of the kind of innovative thinking CRISP aims to support with grants worth up to 50 per cent of project costs to a maximum of £25,000.
CRISP can consider applications from various types of organisations and will support a wide range of activities such as community shops, pubs and childcare facilities, as well as relocating post offices in existing premises, finding ICT solutions to the loss of local services and setting up mobile outreach services.
Cumbria County Council leader Tim Stoddard will formally launch CRISP at 10am during his speech to the the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs' Rural Conference at the Castle Green Hotel on Friday. He said: "This is really excellent scheme for the county. Here in Cumbria we have a larger proportion of the population living in deep rural or 'super sparse' areas than any other county in England. It may be part of what makes Cumbria so special, but it also makes getting and retaining services very challenging.
Kate Willard, Chief Executive of Rural Regeneration Cumbria, said "Luckily for Cumbria there is no shortage of imagination and creativity out there to come up with innovative solutions to the challenges of service provision. CRISP is an excellent scheme designed to support communities who come up with answers to some of the questions posed by living in really rural areas."