When the Budget for People and Place in South Lanarkshire was agreed in February one of the new investments was additional, recurring funding to support the work of voluntary organisations operating in the area.

Today councillors agreed to award grants of between £1,217 and £20,000 to 25 organisations providing a range of services, including family support for people with profound learning difficulties, exercise classes for Parkinson’s Disease sufferers, and free transport to hospital for cancer patients.

Jackie Taylor, Executive Director of Finance and Corporate Resources, said: “Last year the council worked with local groups to draw up our new Third Sector Partnership, the vision of which is to make South Lanarkshire the best place in Scotland for voluntary groups to operate.

“These grants demonstrate that this was not just words – when our elected members worked together to agree their budget for 2025-26 they took the decision to back up the partnership with action. As a result, more community groups will now be able to fund activities that make a very real difference to local lives.”

Although the £300,000 is recurring funding, the grants that were approved by the Finance and Corporate Resources Committee today were made under one-off arrangements.

Councillors had previously agreed that this would be an additional round of grants from the Community Can Do Fund, which was open to applications in December 2025 and January 2026.

Initial funding was for £200,000 and was heavily over-subscribed. However, groups which scored highly during that process, but just missed out on funding, will now benefit from the additional £300,000.

Councillors heard that this process had been agreed with Voluntary Action South Lanarkshire (VASLan), which represents the sector. Award letter will be issued to the successful applicants in the coming days. More details can be found here.

Council officers and VASLan are also working on how best to utilise the recurring funds going forward, including how VASLan might build on the council fund by attracting match funding from national funding organisations, entrepreneurs and benefactors.

Under previous budget decisions, a total of £500,000 will be available for the sector again in 2027-28, and then £300,000 each year thereafter.