Firstly, please allow me to wish you all a Happy New Year; I hope you all had a lovely festive break.
This email comes as 2024 begins and as you are aware, the time of year when the Scottish Government is setting its budget, and their partners are notified of grant funding decisions.
Just before the break, the Scottish Community Safety Network met with the Scottish Government to discuss their grant commitments to the network for the financial year 2024/2025. Sadly, the news we received was not good and we would like to take this opportunity to provide you with some brief details, so you are informed as our membership, but also to offer you the opportunity to provide comment on the outcome from the Scottish Government.
For the period 01 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, the SCSN will receive 50% less in grant funding from the Scottish Government than we received for the current year.
The Scottish Government has advised the SCSN that this is due to the withdrawal of support for our work on home safety; we understand that overall, Home Safety Scotland has been deprioritised following a review of the expenditure within Building Safer Communities which prioritises work aligned to the Justice Vision, 2023-26. The SCSN are discussing this with the Government firstly, as we feel this is an important piece of work that is being lost, but secondly as this work only represents 16% of SCSN activity, so does not equate to the full reduction in funding.
This is of course disappointing and there will be an impact on our work and our membership. The Board along with Lorraine, SCSN’s Chief Officer, are continuing to engage with the Scottish Government to understand why such a substantial reduction has been decided and the impact this will have on our delivery and staffing model, and ultimately the outcomes that can be feasibly achieved within Building Safer Communities and the support we can provide to CSPs and member organisations.
We’d very much appreciate hearing from you any concerns or comments you may have on how this decision will affect the support we give to your organisation or Community Safety Partnerships. We are particularly interested to hear from you on what you think we should be prioritising within the funding allocation we will now have, taking into account a potential reduction in staff and capacity, and whether you think there are avenues we could or should explore for other funding to complement that of the Scottish Government.
The Board would like to take the opportunity to thank you for all your support with this.
Jennifer Middlemiss
Chair of the Scottish Community Safety Network
Please email any comments or concerns to info@scsn.org.uk