On 18 July 2007 it was announced that CSIP Eastern was successful in our bid to the BLF. Please follow this link to the BLF press release page and click here to go to our homepage where the news has been announced.

The grant of £3,900,019 comes from the Big Lottery Fund’s Well-being programme, which focuses on improving mental health, healthy eating and physical activity across England. The grant is one of fourteen awards worth over £126 million which was announced on 18 July 2007.

Early in 2006, the Big Lottery Fund (BLF) launched a Well-Being Programme to support initiatives that encourage communities to lead healthier life-styles and improve well-being. The programme aims to complement existing government policy on improving public health and BLF is looking for national impact in three priority areas:

1) People and communities have improved mental health and well-being

2) People are more physically active

3) Children, parents and the wider community eating more healthily

There is £165m available nationally over five years for the Well-Being Programme. Some of this is ear-marked for specific projects but the balance is available to fund regional and national portfolios of projects which will have an impact across different geographical areas and groups of beneficiaries. CSIP Eastern has led the development of a portfolio bid to the BLF Well-being Programme for the East of England. The bid was developed with a Steering Group involving senior representatives of key strategic organisations in the region including the East of England Public Health Group based at GO East, Regional Physical Activity Forum / Sport England, COVER (Community & Voluntary Forum for the East of England), East of England Regional Assembly (EERA) and the Regional Healthy Living Centres Network. As potential lead agency for the proposed regional portfolio, CSIP Eastern will act as the portfolio managers if the bid is successful. In June, statutory and non-statutory organisations in the region were sent a briefing document inviting them to submit an expression of interest in being part of the regional portfolio. This document included information about the process by which the portfolio bid would be assembled and how to apply. Project proposals were then submitted via county co-ordinators using an electronic project proposal form by 30 June 2006. The Steering Group received over 120 proposals from organisations wishing to be included in the portfolio bid. These were evaluated using clear evaluation criteria - linked to the Well-Being Programme Objectives and specific national and regional priorities. A stage 1 bid was formally submitted to the BLF by CSIP Eastern on 28 July 2006 - 'Well-being in the East: Delivering a Health, Active Future'.

We heard from the BLF in December 2006 that we were invited to proceed to stage 2 of the process and that we needed to prepare a more detailed application. This was done with the help of the Steering Group and all projects who were considered for the Stage 2 Submission. More details can be found on the BLF Update Page where you can read a copy of the submitted bid.