MORE than 100 of Hertfordshire's voluntary groups, clubs and schools are set to benefit from the latest round of community spending.

Hertfordshire County Council is providing almost £365,000 to help the groups buy vital new equipment, kick-start new schemes or pay for one-off projects.

It received 200 applications from various organisations as part of the competitive bidding process and staff carefully assessed each one to target those that should improve life for Hertfordshire youngsters.

Among this year's successful applicants were Camp Primary School, Wheatfields Infants School and Redbourn Youth Club in addition to the local branches of larger organisations such as The Samaritans, Parentline Plus and the Citizens Advice Bureau.

The idea of the Hertfordshire funding programme is to improve and simplify the management of bids for community-based projects, rather than handling them individually.

County councillor Derrick Ashley, executive member for community information and development, said: "With so many worthy and imaginative projects being put forward for funding, it's not easy to decide which ones we can support and which we can't but we have to be consistent in the way we handle the applications to be fair to everyone.

"The underlying aim is to make it easy for community groups to apply, and to be clear about what they need to do.

"The county council is also helping out the organisations that were not successful in this round by offering advice and information on other sources of external funding which are available via the Hertfordshire External Resources Network."

Full details of the successful organisations can be found on the county council website at www.hertsdirect.org/funding.

July 4, 2002 14:00