A meeting of the Finance, Economy and Corporate Support Committee at Stirling Council agreed yesterday (Thursday, 11 September) to invest £470,000 over the next financial year in six key community programmes.
The projects tackle issues which are regularly raised by residents with their ward councillors.
Councillors agreed that one-off savings identified in the budget from the current financial year will be used to fund the following projects:
Community Gardens & Parks Fund - £140,000 to support community and council-run projects aimed at providing community gardening spaces and other enhancements in local parks, including the replacement of seating and picnic benches to tackle social isolation and improve health and wellbeing.
Safer Walking Routes - £110,000 to enhance infrastructure and improve footway and core path networks.
Community Transport Start-Up Fund - £100,000 to create a fund to support innovative community transport initiatives through their early stages, including improvements to the Trossachs Explorer.
CCTV Enhancements - £70,000 to allocate additional investment to improve safety in underpasses by adding additional CCTV cameras.
‘Welcome to Stirling’ Signage - £30,000 to refresh ‘Welcome to Stirling’ signage, including cleaning or replacement as appropriate, in order to improve the first impressions of visitors to Stirling.
Active Stirling Walking Programme Development - £20,000 to Active Stirling to further develop their walking programme up to September 2026 and ensure the resource is not lost, allowing Active Stirling to seek out longer term funding.
Identified by our communities
Stirling Council leader, Cllr Gerry McGarvey, said: “We protected funding in our budget discussions for 2025/26 in order to respond to priorities that had been identified by our communities, in addition to the services we typically provide.
“All councillors are regularly contacted by residents with requests and suggestions for projects they consider would best benefit their communities. I’m pleased the committee agreed the funding will be distributed equitably across the seven wards of Stirling Council.
“The motion was unanimously approved, which underlined the cross party consensus and the willingness of everyone to place the needs and aspirations of our people first.”