Our Funding Approach

• Sharing value – We are committed to delivering positive benefits across the north of Scotland, ensuring that funding is distributed fairly and in collaboration with the communities involved.
  
  
• Co-creation to maximise impact – We know local people are the experts of their own area, so we want to work with you to ensure that local priorities are taken into consideration and any funding will have the maximum possible impact for your community. 

• Flexibility – We understand that the priorities of a community and the environment around a project can change, so we commit to a flexible approach that allows quick responses to emerging issues where necessary. 

• Good Governance – We commit to an approach that builds trust with communities, ensuring that all decision-making for funds is independent and representative of communities. 

• Transparency – We will treat communities with respect and provide honest, open, and meaningful engagement at all stages of our relationship with them.  

Our Future Funding Delivery 

As is currently the case, based on the findings of our 2023 public consultation, we will continue to deliver community benefit across a strategic Regional Fund and a series of Local Funds, with funding being allocated equally (half of all available funding being delivered through the Regional Fund and half of all available funding being delivered through our Local Funds): 

• Regional Fund: This fund aims to support strategic projects, leaving behind a significant and transformational impact across the north of Scotland. 

• Local Funds: These funds are available to communities who are situated close to new infrastructure, supporting projects that aim to positively impact local communities. The focus of these funds will be developed through discussions with communities, ensuring that local priorities are supported. 

Where the value of a Local Fund is calculated at less than £1.1m, communities may be able to access up to 100% of the funds available for local projects, where suitable projects are available. This is to ensure that the fund can have the maximum impact within that area. This can be discussed during the consultation process. 

Our Local Fund Delivery 

Each local fund will be made up of a series of different elements of connected infrastructure (e.g. one local fund could be made up of the funding from two or more substations and the overhead line connecting these). These local funds will be broadly grouped on our website by local authority area. For example, if you live in Aberdeenshire, you will be able to see all the local funds available within that area and apply through one application link. 

Our aim is to make applying to funds as simple as possible, by minimising the number of local funds (by connecting the elements of infrastructure), and ensuring that you can see all the local funds available to you in one place. 

When applying to a fund, all applications will be made through our online Community Investment Portal. This online portal allows you to save a draft of your application, track your application status, and manage your funds should you receive an award.  

Decision Making Process 

For our Regional Fund, decisions will continue to be made by the panel already recruited and in place. This panel is chaired by Peter Peacock, former Scottish Government Minister and Convenor of Highland Council. The other panel members are: Louisa Macdonell, Lucy Conway, Nicholas Gubbins and Christianna Logan (SSENT representative).  

For Local Funds, there will be ten decision-making panels broadly based on local authority areas, who will be responsible for making decisions for all local funds that fall within that area. These panel areas will be: 

• Orkney 

• Shetland 

• Eilean Siar 

• Highland North 

• Highland South 

• Moray 

• Angus & Dundee City 

• Aberdeenshire & Aberdeen City 

• Perth & Kinross, Stirling and Clackmannanshire 

• Arygll and North Ayrshire 

Please note that local funds are only for beneficiaries within our licence area and some areas within the Local Authority areas above are covered by Scottish Power Energy Networks who will have separate funding schemes.  You can find out which Transmission Operator you are covered by here.  

Panel members will be identified through an open recruitment process, advertised to all communities within our local fund areas. As per the Guidance, panels will not include community council members, anyone working for the local authority, or local representatives (e.g. local councillors), although these individuals and/or organisations will take part in the consultation process for the fund. 

We want to work with communities to ensure that panel members reflect a range of interests, experiences, skills and characteristics within the community they are representing. We will ensure that we are working with a wide range of community groups to advertise the opportunity to join the panel to as many people as possible, including hard-to-reach groups. 

When deciding on which projects to fund, panels will prioritise projects close to new infrastructure. They will also consider a range of other factors including value for money, fit with local place or community plans, deliverability, community involvement, evidence of need and alignment with fund priorities.  

Local Fund Consultation 

We are committed to co-creating all our local funds alongside the relevant communities, ensuring that these funds best support the priorities of the local area and will have a positive impact.  

Based on the UK Government Guidance, our team will identify which elements of infrastructure are eligible for community benefit funding within your area. We will use this information to form the basis of a local fund and will work out the total expected value of that fund. 

Once this information is available, community engagement activity will commence. We will aim to begin detailed community benefit fund consultation and design prior to starting construction and we are currently building up our team to deliver funding across our project portfolio. 

The fund consultation is separate from any planning consultation – community benefit is focused on supporting communities in a meaningful way and should not be seen as an influencing factor in planning decisions. However, it should be noted that where a project does not go ahead, community benefit funding will not be distributed. We aim to start distributing funding if and when main construction starts on the project.  

For our community benefit fund consultation, we will aim to engage with as broad a range of stakeholders and community members as possible. This will include arranging meetings with key community representatives (e.g. community councils, development trusts, community development teams, relevant local authority teams), as well as arranging information events for the whole community. 

The results of this consultation will be used to identify the area of benefit and priorities for the fund, with a proposal being shared with all key community members, before being published on our website.