A number of community partnerships have expressed an interest in bidding for part of the Local Action fund for rural communities.

At this stage the funding being sought by 35 groups for more than £86m, compared with the £28m of funding available.

Local Action is a competitive fund so all groups know that their plans will be competing against others from across South West England to win support.

"The response has been fantastic and we hope there will be some innovative and long-term plans that will really benefit the region’s rural areas,” said Bruce Douglas, rural delivery manager at the South West of England Regional Development Agency (RDA), which manages Local Action.

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"The purpose of this expression of interest phase is to enable us to review whether potential Local Action Groups have a reasonable likelihood of meeting the selection criteria before they commit resources to develop a Local Development Strategy and submit a full application for funding.

"The expressions of interest are currently being assessed and we will provide feedback to applications in the last week of January."

Local Action is a major contribution to the regional implementation of the EU and Defra-funded Rural Development Programme (England) which will be officially launched in the region at the beginning of next month.

Applicants were invited to supply outline details of plans including details of their proposed Local Action area, their community partnership, local development proposals and explain how the group's objectives and priorities fit with the objectives of the Rural Development Programme for England and priorities for Local Action.

Information about Local Action and the list of Expressions of Interest is available from the RDA website: www.southwestrda.org.uk/local-action.

(JM)