GROUPS across Dumbarton and the Vale have benefitted from a share of £103,000 of funding following the council’s latest round of community budgeting.

Recipients include West Dunbartonshire Community Foodshare, Vale of Leven Autism and Asperger’s Forum, Renton Craigandro Football Club, Dumbarton Youth Football League, Loch Lomond Rugby Club, Bonhill Parish Church and Friends of Levengrove.

The funds were allocated to 28 community projects in total across West Dunbartonshire and will be put towards purchasing new resources and upgrading facilities.

West Dunbartonshire Community Foodshare, which supports families and individuals on the breadline who would otherwise go without food, applied for £5,000 and received the most votes in the round.

Clair Coyle, one of the organisation’s trustees, said: “Obviously we are delighted to have secured the funding.

“We are planning to convert our van to a van with a chiller unit and hope to work with more retailers by picking up surplus food and redistributing it to those living in poverty – rather than binning it and letting it go to waste.

“We are hoping it will help us to make it a more dignified support because people will not only be receiving donations of food, but by using surplus food from supermarkets they will be helping the bigger environmental cause by not wasting food.

“In 2017 we supported 8,593 people.

“The numbers over the last six months of 2017 have increased and at the moment our distribution centres are very busy.

“Possibly if we can increase the use of surplus food we can support maybe 20 per cent more at the moment.”

Vale of Leven Autistic and Asperger’s Forum (VOLAAF), which is based at the West of Scotland Autism Centre in Renton, also applied for a grant of £5,000.

The forum, which runs support groups for the parents and provides youth clubs for children with autism and Asperger’s, plans to use the money to create a resource room with books and computers, which parents can use to do research and children can use for homework and educational games.

Gary Miller, VOLAAF chairman, said: “It is going to help us a lot and enable us to help the parents with things they are dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

“We are also going to use the funding to get equipment like weighted blankets because the children respond well to pressure on the body, and fidget toys and things like that to hand out to members.”

Following the funding allocations, Dumbarton councillor David McBride said: “I wish to offer my congratulations to all the groups who were successful in last week’s community budgeting process.

“When we started this a few years ago only a few groups were successful. Now the variety of projects, all very worthwhile and deserving is fantastic.”

A West Dunbartonshire Council spokesman said 56 bids for phase three of the community budgeting scheme were taken forward to the Making Connections conference on February 3. Residents had the chance to review summaries of each idea before voting for their top five projects. In addition, people were able to vote online.

He added: “This was the final phase of community budgeting, with £425,000 of funding allocated across the three phases. We look forward to working with the latest successful bidders on their projects.”

The council said each project is expected to get the amount they originally applied for.