Local Resilience Forums to benefit from new innovation fund

On the back of the Government’s Integrated Review, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has now published details of a new LRF Innovation Fund that is designed to allow LRFs in England to develop and test new and innovative ways of working. The fund is seeking projects that promote effective working within and across boundaries to build resilient communities. Projects should encourage a whole of society approach to resilience.

Following feedback from a pilot scheme that ran last year, this fund welcomes bids under three specific themes for each of the next three years.

The theme for 2023 is data and digital technology. There is £450,000 available for projects that embrace future digital trends, utilise data, technologies and equipment to improve an LRF’s ability to prevent, prepare, respond and recover from emergencies.

The government has set out three design challenges that it is particularly interested in exploring under the broad banner of data and digital. One is on risk management, another on promoting whole of society approaches to resilience and the third is on improving interoperability and cooperation between agencies and partners.

The 38 LRFs in England are eligible to apply for the fund and bids are welcomed from single LRFS or group of LRFs. The government is seeking expressions of interest by 11 November 2022. The fund itself will open for bids on 11 November with completed applications due by 20 January 2023.