Grants of up to £500 are available to Scottish Community Councils to help them develop local resilience plans that address potential natural hazards such as heavy snow, landslides, high winds and other disruptive events, enhancing their local community preparedness and response to natural hazards.

This fund was launched last year, and five Community Councils were awarded grants to support their resilience work:

• Colvend and Southwick Community Council:  will use the funding support the production and distribution of tailored community resilience plan leaflets.
• Ashgrove and Stockethill Community Council will be working to collate location-specific resilience resources including maps, contacts and information for their area in Aberdeen which they will host in an accessible, single-point resource online.
• Muirhead, Birkhill & Liff Community Council are working to develop a comprehensive resilience plan for the area which will help to ensure adequate resources are available to those in need and volunteers can quickly assist during crisis incidents.
• Tongue Community Council are developing a community resilience plan for the area, including the villages of Melness and Skerray. The plan will address issues such as road closures, power outages, and loss of mobile phone signal, to support continuous operation of essential services.
• Cromar Community Council’s funding will go towards the production of their resilience plan, which has been carefully tailored to the needs of the Howe of Cromar community. The plan, printed on a handy Z-card, will be distributed to every household in the area.

The NCR has also launched its Third Sector, Community and Practice Fund for 2025, which is designed to support community groups and third-sector organisations to deliver innovative, 12-month projects that strengthen community resilience to natural hazards.

Funding of up to £15,000 is available for these projects, which should use community-led, place-based approaches to empower local communities, enabling them to respond to and recover from natural hazards effectively.

The deadline for applications for both funds is 31 January 2025, and you can find out how to apply on the National Centre for Resilience website.