Cabinet decides on Thursday whether 37 village halls, clubs and churches get £285,332.83 from the last round of the £1m Community Grant Fund.

Thirty-seven community projects across the Harborough district are waiting on a decision on Thursday evening, and between them they have asked for £285,332.83.

They are the last applications to the council’s £1m Community Grant Fund, a capital scheme first agreed as part of the 2024/25 budget that hands every town and parish in the district a fixed pot to spend on local projects. Cabinet meets at 6pm on Thursday 24 September in the Council Chamber at the Symington Building on Adam and Eve Street, and will decide each application for full funding, part funding or none.

Officers have recommended all 38 items on the list, the 37 new applications and one earlier award being looked at again, as eligible projects recommended for consideration. That is not the same as a recommendation to award. The report puts the decision squarely to members.

What is actually being asked for

The list is not abstract. It is fencing, flooring, fuse boards and a village water pump.

The five largest requests are:

  • £32,998 for Lutterworth Town Council, to fence Leaders Farm Cemetery
  • £26,440.55 for Fleckney Village Hall, for flood-proof doors with integrated access systems
  • £20,737.72 for the parish church of Market Harborough, St Dionysius, to put 150 chairs in the nave and north aisle in place of fixed pews
  • £19,308 for Great Glen Tennis Club, for protective high fencing
  • £15,958.34 for The Hub Community Centre and Café Fifty Five at Thurnby, to build the first phase of a car park at the pavilion
Bar chart of the five largest requests in round four of Harborough's £1m Community Grant Fund, from £32,998 for Lutterworth cemetery fencing down to £15,958.34 for a car park at Thurnby
The five largest requests in the final round. Graphic by Harborough News.

Below them sit the small ones that tell you more about village life than the big ones do. Shearsby Parish Council wants £955 to restore the heritage water pump on the village green, the last unrestored item there after the phone box and pump station were done. Bruntingthorpe Parish Council wants £4,697 for a second permanent speed radar sign, so that one can stand in Bruntingthorpe and one in Upper Bruntingthorpe rather than the existing sign being moved between the two. Laughton and Mowsley Cricket Club wants £1,000 for a sightscreen. Bitteswell Cricket Club wants £6,130 for a reconditioned mower. Harborough Band wants £14,378.78 for three E flat tenor horns, percussion cases and music folders.

Market Harborough’s own two entries are modest. The Market Harborough Story Centre has asked for £2,115.50 for a camera, lighting and audio equipment. The town’s remaining allocation before this round is £37,232, and the church’s chair request would take more than half of it.

The money left, and the money already spent

This is round four of year two, and the report calls it the underspend round.

  • The year two fund was £1m, again split between the towns and parishes
  • Rounds one, two and three awarded £542,464.32
  • That leaves £457,535.68 in the fund
  • The 37 new applications total £285,332.83

Every application in this round sits within the original allocation for its own parish, which is a condition of the scheme. The exception is a district-wide applicant: Citizens Advice LeicesterShire has asked for £4,392 from the underspend pot rather than from any one parish’s share. Its application states that in 2025/26 it supported 1,840 clients across Harborough, handled 7,726 issues, and that clients saw financial gains of £1,192,402 while it managed £951,933 of debt.

The one that has come back

The thirty-eighth item is not a new application. Glooston Village Hall was awarded £15,000 in round two, in March 2026, for an accessibility project to reconfigure its toilets and provide two new accessible facilities. Glooston, Cranoe and Stonton Wyville pooled their allocations, of up to £5,000 each, to pay for it.

Officers report that a change to building regulations in May means the approved project can no longer go ahead as designed. The hall has come back with a different scheme: a complete refurbishment of the existing toilets within their current footprint, with commercial-grade wall panels, non-slip flooring, new doors, hot-air hand dryers, instant-flow water heaters, LED downlighters and a new electrical supply. The new total project cost is £15,797, with the difference coming from hall reserves. Because the scope has changed, the grant is back in front of members, still at £15,000. The works are expected to start in December 2026 and take about two weeks.

A second decision that matters more than it sounds

The report asks Cabinet for something else as well. Whatever is left in the underspend after Thursday should, it says, be allocated by the Chief Executive or the Director of Communities and Wellbeing, in consultation with the Leader, and recorded as a written record of decision.

The reason is procedural but worth knowing. The earlier report had said the underspend would be decided by a Cabinet Sub-committee Grants, and that sub-committee no longer exists. Sign this off and the remaining money is handed out by officers rather than in public at a meeting.

What it means for you

If your village hall, club or parish council is on the list, the decision is made on Thursday 24 September at 6pm. The meeting is open to the public at the Symington Building and is broadcast live from the council’s website, so you can watch it without going.

If you want to check your own parish’s position, Appendix A of the report gives the remaining allocation for every applicant parish before any round four decisions are made. Fleckney has £48,065 left and four applications in this round. Lutterworth has £48,650 and six. Scraptoft has £50,000 and one, for £2,635.56.

Every application in this round has a letter of support from its parish council or parish meeting, except the district-wide ones, and carries the views of a district ward councillor. Applications for Market Harborough organisations also need the support of the Market Harborough Special Expenses Advisory Panel.

The fund is capital only, so it pays for things rather than for running costs, and grants must generally be spent within a year of being received unless the council agrees to extend.

Other decisions that day and the papers behind them are on our planning page and our roadworks and travel page as they affect the district.

Sources

All figures on this page are as published in the council’s own report and appendices. No award has been made yet: Cabinet decides on 24 September.