A NUMBER of small community projects in West Devon have received almost £18,000 from local county councillors over the last year.

Each Devon county councillor has an allocation of £10,000 a year to support community projects in their area. In the past 12 months, 22 projects have benefited in West Devon, 21 of which obtained match funding from other organisations.

Projects that have benefited include the Chagford Conservation Group, which received funds to help with a wide range of conservation activities in the area such as repairing a footpath, laying hedges around the village, clearing gorse and building an otter holt.

Cllr Debo Sellis from Tavistock recognised that there were possibly parts of her electoral area which may have benefited from grit bins after the severe snow earlier in the year, and invited members of the public to suggest areas where they thought access to a grit bin would have helped during the bad weather.

Cllr Sellis received many suggestions and was then able to organise site visits with the highways department. Now 15 extra grit bins have been purchased from the locality budget.

Cllr Sellis said: This was an excellent opportunity to use some of the locality budget to help the community. Responses were in general realistic and reasonable, and I thank the scores of residents who helped.

Members of the West Devon county committee also joined together to contribute towards the purchase of a new bus for the Tavistock Community Transport Association.

West Devon county committee chairman, Cllr James McInnes, said: We can really make a difference with the money we allocate to local projects, especially with those projects where we are the final piece of a funding jigsaw, or as a means to encourage other investors.

I think the level of matched funding certainly shows that a little bit of money can go a long way.

Any unallocated funds will be carried over to the next year.

The county has eight county committees and councillors are able to join together to allocate larger amounts of funding should a project have a wider reach than one councillors area.

To view the minutes of the West Devon county committee meetings please visit http://www.devon.gov.uk/index_ccw.htm">www.devon.gov.uk/index_ccw.htm