East Ayrshire Council has won an award for an initiative others could well copy.
Scotland’s Towns Partnership, which is supporting towns all over Scotland to put new life into our high streets, held its first ever awards ceremony and presented a special judges award to their team for their efforts.
The East Ayrshire Gift Card enables shoppers and businesses to keep it local through the pandemic to helping those in need have choice and dignity with their spending.
It works like a pre-loaded credit card which you can buy online at www.eastayrshiregiftcard.co.uk or in selected participating business – with nearly 200 outlets to choose from throughout the area.
It keeps the money local, supporting precious high streets and giving smaller retailers an easy to use, free website presence.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The subject of regeneration supported by the Scottish Government typically receives little or no media attention. For example, there is almost nothing reported on the nature and local impacts of the capital investments by the SG with and for local authorities.
Regeneration Capital Grant Fund – ‘supports locally developed place based regeneration projects that involve local communities, helping to tackle inequalities and deliver inclusive growth in deprived, disadvantaged and fragile remote communities across Scotland.’
A very long list of projects supported by the RCG Fund between 2014 and 2022 can be found on the SG’s website. £27.5m was awarded in 2014-15: by the eighth round of awards in 2021-22 the annual value of awards was £27.2m.
Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP) – was instigated in 2021 and aims to tackle long-term vacant and derelict land in Scotland. £5m of this £50m fund has already been allocated to local authorities. A list of VDLIP projects supported to date can be found on the SG’s website.
Town Centre Fund – £50m capital set up this fund in 2019-2020 in partnership with COSLA. ‘Every local authority has received an allocation of the fund based on an equal weighting of the number of towns in a local authority (where a towns is a locality with a population equal to or greater than 1,000 people) and the local authority population.’
See: https://www.gov.scot/policies/regeneration/capital-investment/
In addition, there is funding for community-led regeneration through for example the Empowering Communities Fund.
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