Will the Minister confirm levels of core funding provided by Welsh Government to environmental NGOs during the period 2014-2020 and confirm whether this includes any funding from the Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 or other Welsh Government funding sources?
The Welsh Government does not routinely provide core funding or financial support to cover the basic organisational and core administrative costs of NGOs. Our grant and project funding aims to support the delivery of specific, pre-agreed outcomes. Our Core Funding Programme awarded £22.04m to eNGOs from October 2015 to March 2018, with a further six month extension of £3.79m. The source of this funding was Welsh Government Programme Funding. Third sector organisations competitively applied for this grant and committed to becoming more financially sustainable after the Programme, on the mutual understanding that future funding was not guaranteed. Further transition funding of £0.92m up to March 2019 allowed a number of the organisations to implement their exit plans for greater sustainability, prepare for the future and, in a number of cases, to bridge the gap between the end of the core funding and the start of our Enabling Natural Resources Wales (ENRaW) grant scheme. A list of Rural Development Programme approved projects for the period 2014 – 2020 is available at https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2020-09/rural-development-programme-2014-2020-socio-economic-approved-projects_0.xlsx.