CUMBERLAND Council’s eight new Community Panels are "open for business", and community groups can apply for support.

The council say that the panels are designed to put residents at the heart of decision making in their communities.

 Made up of ward councillors, they will liaise with a network of local partners and residents to ensure effective investment.

Each panel has an amount of funding, but can also support projects with lobbying, signposting and leveraging further help.

Councillor Lisa Brown, Deputy Leader of Cumberland Council, said: “It’s exciting to see the new panels move forward and start to receive applications. The hyper-local support they can offer is intrinsic to helping create resilient, vibrant communities.

“We set up Community Panels, and their supporting Community Networks, to deliver real change - addressing the particular needs of their area at a grass-roots level.

“We’re keen to hear both from existing groups and projects, who may have received local council funding before, and new applicants keen to get their ideas off the ground. Check soon, as your local panel will have a deadline by which to apply.

“Community Panels are here to listen, so I would urge people to get in touch and see how we can help. We want to see investment led by communities themselves and enabled by the council.”

The panels are also in the process of consulting with their community to decide which issues should be prioritised.

Cumberland’s eight Community Panels are: Workington Together, Petteril, Whitehaven and Coastal, Fells and Solway, Lakes to Sea, Carlisle West, South Cumberland, Border, Fellside and North Carlisle.

The areas covered by each panel, their membership, and future meeting dates, can be found online.

The panels’ funding is based on data around health, which is closely aligned to levels of deprivation.

Campaigners have previously called for parish councils to be set up across Carlisle to provide more hyper-local governance after the end of the two-tier council system in April.

Colin May, who is part of Putting Cumbria First, has previously proposed that individual areas of Carlisle, such as Denton Holme or Stanwix, should get their own parish councils with councillors elected from within in the local community and that these should form a ‘cluster council’ for the city.

A consultation was held in Stanwix last year to ask whether residents would be in favour of a village council and more than 70 per cent of respondents voted yes.