Local authority agrees addition £50,000 to help more people get online following success of inclusion initiatives
Derbyshire County Council is allocating an additional £50,000 for its digital inclusion initiative that aims to get more people online, improve their online safety and increase their digital skills.
Photo by John Schnobrich / Unsplash
Previous funding of £47,000 had been allocated to organisations across the region to help thousands of Derbyshire residents. That included helping people get online in the first place as well as digital training.
The new funding will be managed on the county council’s behalf by Rural Action Derbyshire, which will oversee the delivery of digital inclusion small grants to expand the reach, and scope of the current small grants programme. The aim is to improve digital health and online safety, while also driving up skills to improve employment opportunities for Derbyshire residents.
As we reported last month, the government is keen to address the one-in-four Britons currently excluded from the online world and has set out a UK digital inclusion action plan. There is, of course, already a lot of work being undertaken in this area. The month before that, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) announced funding of £70,000 to make Oldham one of the most digitally inclusive towns in the country. Now Derbyshire is hot on their heels…
Ellie Houlston, Public Health Director at Derbyshire County Council, says: ‘People are digitally excluded if they face barriers to accessing the internet or engaging online. This is turn can prevent them from reaching the services they need, missing out on help and support or making them feel cut off from their wider community.
‘There is a strong link between digital exclusion, financial exclusion, and social exclusion. It can even mean they are unable to fully participate in society in the way that they may want to. During the Covid-19 pandemic we saw this “digital divide” widen even more as more products and services moved online. Therefore it’s important to ensure that we continue to provide funding to enable more residents to become digitally included, connected, and confident.’
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