Fife web development consultancy Horisk to create ESES City Region Deal Community Benefits portal

A new portal developed by Fife web consultancy Horisk Leslie Development will enable good causes and communities serving 1.3 million people across the six local authority areas of Fife, Edinburgh, the Lothians and Borders to directly make community benefit requests of support from suppliers delivering projects under the £1.3bn Edinburgh and South East Scotland (ESES) City Region Deal City Deal.

‘Community Benefits’ are the method by which local communities and good causes can receive additional social value from developments.

Traditionally this has involved activities such as the guarantee of apprenticeships or school visits to new local construction projects, opportunities guaranteed to the local workforce and the use of local supply chains. Other activities can include improvements to public spaces, support for local charities and voluntary groups.

Website

Fife web development consultancy and Chamber member Horisk has won the tender to build a website which will help realise Community Benefits under the £1.3bn City Region Deal after a selection process undertaken through Public Contracts Scotland. It’s hoped the website will be launched in September 2021.

The site, operationally led by Capital City Partnership, will also be a landing page for community updates on City Region Deal progress and features on organisations receiving and businesses delivering benefits. Support and guidance will also be offered on it to businesses of all sizes across the region who may wish to develop their understanding and offering of community benefits.

Although funded by the City Region Deal, the platform will also be open to facilitating Community Benefits opportunities from public and private sector developments across the region and support the wider community wealth-building agenda.

‘Exactly what we were looking for’

Explaining why Horisk was selected, Calum Munro, Community Benefits Officer at the ESES City Region Deal, said: “Horisk Leslie showed a strong understanding of the remit of our project, evidencing relevant examples of previous work. Their proposed site functionality met exactly what we were looking for. That they were a local supplier within the ESES region was an added bonus in allowing us to support local supply chains.”

‘Delighted to be helping communities’

Director Brian Horisk, said: “We’re delighted to have had another public sector client select us to develop a key tool for them using our specialism in simplifying organisational processes.

“As a company committed to helping our local community in whatever ways we can, enabling communities recovering from the effects of Covid-19 across many aspects of society to bid for assistance from suppliers to the ESES City Region Deal will be a very satisfying project to work on.”