Current status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 25 April 2019
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-22230 by Roseanna Cunningham on 28 March 2019, how many projects have been recommended for funding by the Climate Challenge Fund awards panel, but not awarded funding by the Scottish Ministers, in each year since 2014.
In all previous years, the Climate Challenge Fund administrator Keep Scotland Beautiful were given an indicative budget for the Climate Challenge Fund. The independent Grants Panel made recommendations within that indicative budget and in every year from 2014 to 2018, all projects recommended for funding by the Panel were funded.
In 2019, the process for agreeing and adopting the Scottish Government budget had not concluded by the time of the panel meeting. This meant that it was not possible to provide an indicative budget to KSB and unlike previous years it was therefore necessary for the panel to rank all projects, with no budgetary cut-off. When budgets were confirmed, there were 43 projects that were deemed to meet the minimum criteria for funding that were not funded.