A COMMUNITY is up in arms after spending years preparing a £600,000 project to transform their local park, only for it to be refused Lottery funding at the last because their area was not deprived enough.

Lanark Community Development Trust are asking why there is no appeal against the decision of the Scotland Committee of the Big Lottery Fund to refuse £500,000 funding for their Castlebank Park project which, they were told, was turned down partly because Lanark is not an area of deprivation.

As a result of missing out on Lottery funding, the trust will also lose a £93,000 grant from the European Union’s Leader programme which was conditional on gaining the Lottery grant.

The application’s failure is all the more mystifying to the trust because they were given £26,000 by the Big Lottery Fund to prepare a proper business plan and carry out public consultation on the “Growing Community Assets” project which would have seen the park’s derelict sawmill building become a community hub.

“That’s money down the drain,” said Sheila Russell, who chairs the trust. “That £26,000 has just been totally wasted and it is incredibly disappointing after working for five years to get to this point.

“When the officer phoned me up to say we hadn’t been successful, he said part of the reason was that it was oversubscribed, but he also said that they thought we hadn’t made a case to support people from deprived areas.

“Lanark is a country market town and has at least one deprived area, while there is deprivation in the rural hinterland, but with the best will in the world we are not an area of overall deprivation, so does that mean only deprived areas can apply for Lottery funds?”

Though the Big Lottery Fund never guarantees applicants any funding, the trust were encouraged by Lottery officers to apply even after a previous bid was lost due to a change in Lottery fund rules. The trust was also told by one of its consultants that it was one of the best applications in years.

“The consultant was astonished when the result came out,” Russell told The National, “but there’s no right of appeal and I am just disgusted at the way they have wasted all our time, which we gave freely for our community.

“We are totally scunnered as all the signs were that things were going well.

“We’re not just going to give up, but it looks as if the only way we can go forward is with a much cheaper project, possibly as a training programme with a local college.”

A spokesperson for the Big Lottery Fund said: “We fully understand how disappointing this news will be for the trust.

“Their project proposal was considered by our Scotland Committee against a backdrop of applications to a value that was twice as high as our available budget. In our last round of decision making, we received Growing Community Assets applications worth £23 million against a budget of just £12.5 million.”

The National has confirmed with the Big Lottery Fund that the trust had been awarded “development funding” of £26,000 which is irrecoverable. The spokesperson said: “This is common practice and allows groups to fully develop projects including full costs so they understand the scope of large capital projects community groups may be set to take on. Development funding also allows groups to test their ideas with local people. “This funding was not a guarantee of a full capital award, this is made clear to all groups that receive development funding.”

The National asked if it was an issue that Lanark is not an area of deprivation and does this mean that any area that is not deprived cannot apply for a grant?

The spokesperson replied: “The group were eligible to apply for funding under Growing Community Assets. They were not told they could not apply for this grant.”

The spokesperson also confirmed: “There is no appeals process on any Scotland Committee decisions.”