These UK Shared Prosperity Fund projects sit under the Communities and Place theme. It enables places to invest in restoring their community spaces and relationships and create the foundations for economic development at the neighbourhood level.
This strengthens the social fabric of communities, supporting building pride in place. The communities and place theme covers a wide range of local interventions, including:
CHAI is delivering four discrete projects, each designed to increase current welfare rights and debt advice services across Edinburgh.
Through the funding, CHAI offers welfare advice within local community mental health hubs and locality recovery hubs. They also offer welfare advice provisions established in local schools.
In addition, the Growing Families pilot has been expanded. This supports health visitors to ask families if they need money advice.
This project provides support, development, and access to resources for Community Centre management committees across the city.
The purpose is to help management committees develop sustainable plans and strengthen their capacity to deliver services in their local communities.
UK Shared Prosperity Fund funding supports three initiatives under the Good Food Programme.
Fareshare is a food redistribution project providing surplus food from the food industry to around 20,000 individuals and families a week.
The Cook School provides support for people on low incomes to budget, plan and cook low-cost nutritious meals.
Additionally, community pantries offer a dignified alternative to food banks providing families with nutritious food at a minimal cost.
Edinburgh Growing Together supports community gardens in Edinburgh’s council estates.
The work includes project management, development, and community engagement support alongside improvements to infrastructure. The improvements involve establishing new connections to the water mains, new tool storage units, renovation of paths and building and maintaining growing beds.
UK Shared Prosperity Fund funding supports four new community gardens as w ell as providing ongoing support for established gardens.
Empty Kitchen Full Hearts is building upon its core service delivery by turning surplus food into meals delivered to those in need across Edinburgh.
Volunteering and job opportunities are available through the Kitchen Assistant and Volunteer Programme.
The project has created a green space within the local community by regenerating a garden area.
The Thriving Futures Fund is a three-year grant-making programme from Turn2us Edinburgh Trust, delivered in partnership with five organisations across Edinburgh and supported by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF).
Born from an ambition to support people in Edinburgh not only to survive but to thrive, their vision is for everyone in Edinburgh to have enough money to live well now and the resources—as individuals and collectively—to build confidence in the future.
This project is engaging residents in Edinburgh’s cultural offer through the Resident Rewards and Resident First schemes, inviting residents to enjoy new exhibitions or visitor products first or at discounted prices.
UK Shared Prosperity Fund supports three areas of Fresh Start’s work.
Firstly in one of the four growing spaces where there is opportunities for people to take up open-ended supported volunteering roles.
Secondly, the cookery initiatives is engaging people in cooking at home, small group cooking classes and cook clubs where people prepare food and supper clubs.
Thirdly, there will be ongoing opportunities for learning dialogues with service users and volunteers, including online surveys, phone contact, focus groups and community research projects to ensure that the service continues to meet local community needs.
End Poverty Edinburgh is an independent group of citizens formed during the latter stages of the Edinburgh Poverty Commission as a recommendation of their 2020 report, ‘A Just Capital’.
UK Shared Prosperity Fund is supporting the End Poverty Edinburgh to continue to work with Edinburgh Council. This ensures that those with lived experience have the chance to influence policy and practice and to help shape the delivery of strategy to end poverty in the city.
The grant supports the construction of accessible new public conveniences at Hawes Pier, South Queensferry.
New accessible toilet facilities will be developed and constructed which will allow equal access to visitors of all ages and abilities to spend more time in the location.
The funding allows the delivery of modern facilities, which will be accessible to all and incorporate disabled toilets and Changing Places facilities for the severely disabled.
The funding supported the clearing and replanting of an overgrown garden by the front of the Southside Community Centre. The centre created practical volunteering opportunities and skills development for local community groups.
Vintage Vibes is funded through UKSPF to support isolated older people across Edinburgh, pairing them with volunteer befrienders and running engaging activities and events.
In Year 2, additional funding was granted for Volunteer Vibes. This supported a drive to increase the number of volunteers within the project through developing new marketing, enhancing the support infrastructure for volunteers, and creating more varied voluntary roles within the organisation.
In Year 3, additional funding was awarded to develop a new website to support this strategy. The new website will have a focus on accessibility, signposting, and making the volunteering process as barrier-free as possible and will be launched in 2025.
A new building for youth work is in the process of being constructed on the Spartans site, replacing temporary portacabins which are showing signs of wear and tear. Amongst other groups, the building will host the alternative school Spartans run for young people who have disengaged with mainstream education.
The Volunteer Centre is working with local partners in each of the four localities of Edinburgh to develop a holistic programme of gateway opportunities, formal volunteer opportunity development and capacity building for volunteer-involving organisations to directly tackle exclusion and inequality of opportunity in communities.
e. helix@capitalcitypartnership.org
Capital City Partnership is the anchor delivery body for Edinburgh’s employability strategy, working together to tackle inequality and poverty. Capital City Partnership is an Arm’s Length External Organisation of The City of Edinburgh Council and a not-for-profit registered charity (SCO31026).
© 2025 Capital City Partnership
