Community led local development
This programme has now closed.
Sunderland Community Led Local Development (CLLD) Programme
The CLLD programme closed in June 2023 after 6 years of delivering community capacity-building, employment and skills, and enterprise support activities. The programme was designed to create sustainable opportunities and benefits to areas of Sunderland that face significant challenges, such as social exclusion and multiple deprivation, capacity to access job opportunities, poor health and low levels of employment and entrepreneurship.
The programme brought together local communities to explore, identify and address the challenges and experiences that make it more difficult for some people and communities to find a job, access training and support, or set up a new business. It also provided an opportunity to develop local, community-led responses within the most deprived areas of the city, in order to meet local need and address gaps in service provision linked to the key strategic priorities of the programme outlined below.
The programme supported over 30 community-led projects, 24 of which were delivered by the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS), structured around 3 key strategic priorities:
· Enhancing employment and skills provision
· Boosting enterprise and entrepreneurship
· Improving community capacity, partnership working.
The delivery of Sunderland's Local Development Strategy for CLLD was overseen and monitored by a Local Action Group (LAG), made up of community representatives from the public, private and voluntary sectors, supported by Sunderland City Council as the accountable body for the funding.
The target area
The programme was focussed on communities across the Washington, North, East and West areas of Sunderland, At the time of bid submission to government, the target area comprised a population of 146,108 of which 85,588 (or 58.6%) lived in Lower Super Output Areas ranked in the 20% most deprived (based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation). This approach was designed to ensure that CLLD investment would be targeted in those areas and LSOAs with the most serious disadvantage, particularly those that ranked in the top 10% (44,930 people). The most deprived areas included specifically entrenched clusters in Pallion, Redhill, Southwick, Millfield, Sandhill and Hendon and an emerging cluster in Washington North.
What CLLD achieved
The CLLD programme provided funding support to 32 projects, comprising £1.7m European Social Fund grant and £0.9m European Regional Development Fund grant. This European grant funding was matched with £2.3m secured from a wide range of other public, private and VCS sources to support delivery of project activities.
External Evaluation Executive Summary
As part of the CLLD programme the council in partnership with the Local Action Group appointed Centrifuge Consulting in 2018 to undertake external evaluation and summative assessment of the programme. A summary of the headline impacts can be viewed in the linked document:
Sunderland CLLD Programme Evaluation Executive Summary (PDF, 294 KB)
A summary of each project supported can be accessed via the following link:
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