Your Cash Your Caithness

Local people cast their votes on Saturday 29 February 2020 at a Highland Council run participatory budgeting event held in the main hall of Thurso High School.

Eleven (11) out of the twenty-five (25) projects bidding for £10,000.00 community funding, of which £9,465.00 comprised of funds handed over by the former Caithness partnership, were successfully voted for by just over 115 people who registered to vote on the day.

Applicants were allocated a 3 minute slot to sell their project with a further 2 minutes allocated to allow any questions from the audience. The event was compared by the Caithness Civic Leader and Wick and East Caithness Councillor Willie Mackay.

Councillor Mackay said: “I am really pleased and delighted to see so many people turn out to take part in the sixth “Your Cash, Your Caithness” participatory budgeting event in the High School especially considering that Storm Jorge was paying the County a visit at the time. We had 25 groups delivering presentations to a community audience, who then voted for them on their merits.  The event handed out £10,000.00 to local good causes.

“I firmly believe handing decision making to the community it is a great way to support community empowerment and helps build community cohesion.  This event was an opportunity for Caithness groups to meet new people and find out what is happening locally. 

I was heartened by the diverse spread of applications received for this event and I was not disappointed by the standard of the presentations delivered by all the Groups on the day.

“This process is all about handing decision-making back to the community and its part of our localism agenda, which has seen devolving of further powers from the Highland Council to Caithness. 

“Congratulations to the winning groups; I look forward to seeing how you use the money and my sincere thanks to all who made the day such a success.”

The successful bids voted for by the audience are as follows:

North Highland Cancer Information Support Centre - £1,000.00
The John O’Groats Mill Trust - £1,000.00
Caithness Macular Support Group - £1,000.00
Thurso Community Café - £1,000.00
Bower Busy Bees Early Learning Centre - £1,000.00
Caithness Broch Project - £961
Caithness Street Pastors - £1,000.00
No Limits Caithness - £990.00
Thurso Community Development Trust - £1,000.00
Northern Stars THS 2020 - £500.00
Home-Start Caithness - £549.00