Community Resilience Briefing – 1 July 2022
Dear Community Resilience Group/Community Council/Colleagues,
Welcome to The Highland Council’s fortnightly briefing for groups with an interest in local community resilience.
Covid related information
- Scottish Government Covid-19 Guidance
- NHS Inform Covid data
- NHS Inform Covid information and guidance
- NHS Highland local vaccination information
Funding
SCVO is a key source of funding information for the third sector https://scvo.scot/funding. Funds that may be of interest include:
- Highland Council – Common Good Fund This fund can be used to support community activities within Dornoch, Grantown, Inverness, Kingussie, and Tain. Next deadline: 22 July.
- Highland Cross GrantsThis grant can be used to fund capital assets, including transport, buildings, and equipment for the benefit of Highland Communities. Next deadline: 30 September
- Peter Samuel Charitable Trust
Supports many areas of interest, including medical sciences, heritage, and forestry/land restoration. no deadlines, apply at any time.
Provides funding for projects focused on sustainability and equality, creating resilient communities, and tackling climate change. No deadline: apply at any time.
Let’s Do Net Zero Community Buildings Fund
New funding is now available from the Scottish Government’s Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES). The fund aims to support community organisations to reduce their building energy costs and carbon emissions.
The Let’s Do Net Zero Community Buildings Fund is open now and is planned to run until the end of March 2025, subject to funding availability.
Funding is available for many types of community building, including:
- community cafes
- community hubs
- faith buildings
- public halls
- community halls and centres.
Grant funding is available for up to 80% of eligible costs up to a maximum of £80,000.
Find out more.
Welfare, poverty reduction and resilience
- Accessing food in Highland from Cfine/FareShare – No Good Food Should Go To Waste
From June 2022, FareShare will take on the provision of food support to community groups in the Highland Council area requiring help with food supplies for their projects. Contact the FareShare local development officer Michael Sutherland, email [email protected] for details.
Groups considering using FareShare for the first time can find more details at the following link https://fareshare.org.uk/getting-food/. Once interest is registered online, the local development officer will contact you to discuss the membership process.
CFINE operates FareShare Scotland in the North of Scotland, which is part of the FareShare UK network. They take good, in-date surplus from the food industry that would otherwise go to waste and redistribute it to charities and community organisations. They are already in partnership supporting a number of community organisations across Highland.
- Ready Scotland Resilience Hub
The Scottish Government’s READY SCOTLAND Resilience Learning Hub https://ready.scot/learn has recently added 3 short online training sessions:
- The Foundations of Emergency Management in Scotland
- Partnership Working in Emergency Management
- The Role of Community Groups in Emergencies
- Highland Council Community Resilience
In addition Highland Council Resilience Team have produced 2 short YouTube videos on
- Introduction to Community Resilience
- Producing you Community Resilience Plan
These can be found on the Council’s website https://www.highland.gov.uk/info/1226/emergencies/72/emergency_planning
- Highland Good Food Partnership
The Highland Good Food Partnership have developed and launched a map of Highland community food growing projects, this map helps us build a picture of all the fantastic community food growing projects which are developing across the region, and allows us to provide links and improved support between groups.
We would like to ensure that this map is up-to-date and that it includes all growing projects that are established or in development/planning across Highland, so please check if your community enterprise is on the map. If it isn’t, please complete the survey to ensure we know about the great work happening within your community.
Projects of all sizes can be included; from those growing in raised beds for a social activity, to large-scale gardens trying to improve community resilience and reduce food miles.
Link to survey: https://forms.gle/JjndFuw5JyE39CtH8
The map is available to view here. https://highlandgoodfood.scot/food-map/
- Be Cyber Safe on your Holidays
Going on holiday? Whether it’s a staycation or going abroad, it’s easy to forget that protecting your devices and keeping safe online should be on your holiday checklist Here are a few simple tips to support you when you’re away from home.
- Defence against Conti Ransomware
This awareness blog highlights prevention, mitigation and support measures to protect from the threat of Conti Ransomware and to encourage individuals, sectors and organisations to protect and prepare against all types of Cyber-attacks.
- Actions to take to securely configure and monitor PowerShell
The National Cyber Security Centre and international allies have issued a joint advisory which outlines security features in PowerShell that help with protecting credentials, remote management configuration, anti-virus scanning and logging. A copy of the joint advisory can be read here.
Mental Health and Wellbeing
- NHS Highland Mental Wellbeing – a collection of resources and signposts to help people of all ages to look after their own mental wellbeing
Emergency Planning
- Met Office Weather Warnings https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/warnings-and-advice/uk-warnings#?date=2022-06-30
- Met Office Weather Ready https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/warnings-and-advice/weatherready
- Floodline Scotland https://floodlinescotland.org.uk/
- Ready Scotland – preparing for emergencies https://ready.scot/
Kind regards,
Douglas Crawford
