SWINDON Council is to hand down more than £500,000 worth of spending-power to ward councillors as part of a trial project to involve communities more in decisions.

A locality fund will be established in June for each of the seven new locality areas in the borough, and the pilot scheme will run for 18 months.

The areas, which are based on the ward boundaries, comprise councillors from two or three wards, who will set their own priorities and decide how the money is spent, in consultation with the community.

The overall amount of devolved money from 2012/13 comes from existing funds and comprises £100,000 in grassroots and neighbourhood (formerly community) grants, £175,000 in highways improvements, and Streetsmart operational hours valued at £250,000.

The council leader , Rod Bluh, said: “It’s all part of the drive to move money down to localities so that the local councillors work more in consultation with their communities to decide how the money should be spent. It’s on a pilot to start with but it’s the start of something.

“If it’s successful we want to see the amount of money devolved to increase.

“We have done it as a pilot to make sure councillors from different parties can work together effectively, to make sure they can effectively negotiate with their communities.

“The councillors still make the decisions in public, but they will have to consult with their communities.

“Different areas have different requirements, so areas can reflect what’s a priority to them.”

The locality fund idea supports the One Swindon and Stronger Together initiatives, which encourage greater working between the council, private sector, and voluntary sector to solve problems in the community.

The new localitity names are north east, north, north central, west, town centre, east and south.

Each one will get a total of £25,000 of highways money – up to £20,000 for dealing with road maintenance or minor road improvements that are not identified for implementation by the council’s annual highway maintenance programme, plus £5,000 for road lining or signing requests.

Each locality will have £10,000 neighbourhood grants and £4,250 grassroots and admin grants to support community-based projects.

The remainder of the existing grants budget will be available for borough-wide groups.

The Streetsmart resources for each locality amounts to one day a month from the tree gang, one day a month from the graffiti removal crew, two days a month from grounds maintenance, and additional support for community-led initiatives relating to street cleaning, flytipping or recycling.