Lottery funds 'cannot replace Shropshire Council cash'

The £1 million lottery funding for three villages near Oswestry will not be used to replace funding from Shropshire Council or the Government.

John Taylor, who heads the Big Lottery Trust in the West Midlands, has warned that the money will not be a source of replacement funding if grants and other awards dry up because of cutbacks.

The villages of St Martins, Gobowen and Weston Rhyn have been chosen as just one of five communities in the West Midlands to be given one of the £1 million awards.

Only about 150 communities across Britain will be part of the Big Local Trust scheme.

At a meeting in St Martins last night Mr Taylor said the money would be rolled out over the next 10 years but revealed that £10,000 was being made available over the next three months to allow the community to start preparing to decide how the money should be used.

"It will be to benefit the whole community, not just an individual organisation," he said. Next year there will be £20,000 available with a view to moving toward the major funding decisions by 2012.

"There will be no quick fixes but work that will make a long-term difference," Mr Taylor said.

He said the community was chosen because it had been overlooked in the past.

"It has not had as much lottery funding as we would have expected and it is a bit neglected, overlooked by both England and Wales. People living here even feel overlooked by Shropshire."

Mr Taylor said it would be up to the community how the money would be spent.

Meetings will be held to begin the process of managing the funding, including one in Weston Rhyn on October 14 and a fact finding day in Gobowen on November 9.

By Sue Austin