The story of TIF so far in the South West of England

by Laura Rudland Uncategorised

The story so far

The tackling Inequalities Fund (TIF) was launched in April 2020 in response to Covid-19, providing £20m of National Lottery funding from Sport England to support community groups across the country.

The purpose of the fund is to help these local groups continue to exist and engage with people throughout the pandemic, and during the early recovery stages, with a view to keeping them active and connected.

The fund has focused on the communities that have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19, to try and prevent the inequalities gap from widening and to minimise the impact on activity levels. These priority audiences are:

  • Culturally diverse communities
  • Disabled people
  • People with long term health conditions
  • People on low incomes

Wesport received funding through TIF to support partners across the West of England through phases 1 and 2 of the national programme of work. Nearly £160,000 was allocated to local organisations who support those most affected by Covid-19 and the conditions of the lockdown and restrictions.

Through phase 2 of the fund, Sport England invested further through National Partners across England. This saw Voscur, the support and development agency for Bristol’s Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector working in partnership with Black South West Network (BSWN) a Black-led racial justice charity organisation based in Bristol. Recognising by working together we could further increase the reach of TIF, Wesport, Voscur and BSWN worked in partnership to ensure investment complimented existing delivery and supported the long term use of sport and physical activity as a tool for wider health and wellbeing.

Projects have seen great success at reaching communities and engaging people during one of the most challenging times, projects have included:

Ruth Glanvill  Wesport Project Manager added:

TIF has allowed us to create the space to truly listen to partners, collaboratively develop opportunities and sustain physical activity in a place. We’ve had the time to understand how projects connect to a system and join up conversations strategically. It has allowed us to have wider conversations instead of reducing relationships with partners to a project or programme.”

Jointly we have seen distribution of funding to the priority audiences as follows across phase 1 and 2 of TIF:

What's next?

Wesport and Voscur have applied jointly to Sport England for phase 3 of TIF to deliver a further £255,000 to the West of England. This approach will see two avenues of support:

  1. Wesport - Grants programme focussed on the priority audiences across the West of England(Culturally diverse communities, disabled people, people with long term health conditions and people on low incomes).
  2. Voscur - Menu of opportunities for funded partners to support their resilience and capacity building.

Phase 3 is being managed through a solicited bids process, Voscur have engaged the VCSE partners in each of the localities that make up the West of England:

These anchor partners in each locality will solicit bids from organisations who support people from the priority audiences. Existing partners who received funding previously in TIF will also be supported to apply in the third round to further develop their work and develop their sustainability to be functional and effective beyond funding.

Funding needs to be delivered and spent by March 2022 giving partners applying now a six-month window to deliver.

For more information on the programme please visit our website here or contact Ruth on ruth.glanvill@wesport.org.uk.

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Laura Rudland

Marketing and Administration Officer

T: 0117 32 81881