Latest News Updates
Key Dates for Second Application Round
17 April 2008
The key dates for the Second Application Round of the Lowlands and Uplands Scotland Programmes have been agreed by the Programme Monitoring Committee.
Key dates for Second Application Round
Ministerial Announcement on First Round
08 April 2008
The Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism, Jim Mather MSP, has now approved the recommendations of the Programme Monitoring Committee at its meeting on Wednesday 19 March 2008 to award European Structural Funds to projects submitted under the respective ESF and ERDF Priorities in the First Round of the Lowland and Uplands Scotland Programmes 2007-2013.
Advisory Group Meetings
1 February 2008
Over the past weeks all Stage 2 applications received under the First Round have been subject to technical and eligiblity checks by the IAB. The deadline for applicants to submit their revised applications was 9 January 2008. All resubmissions are now with the Advisory Groups, Scottish Government and the IAB for scoring. All scores will be collated for presentation to standing Advisory Groups at the end of the month.
The dates for the Advisory Group meetings under the First Round are:
ERDF Priority 1 - Thursday 21 February
ERDF Priority 2 - Friday 22 February
ERDF Priority 3 - Tuesday 26 February (AM)
ERDF Priority 4 - Tuesday 26 February (PM)
ESF Priority 1 - Tuesday 19 February & Wednesday 20 February
ESF Priority 2 - Monday 25 Februrary
ESF Priority 3 - Wednesday 27 Februrary
Applicants will be informed of the decisions to fund projects shortly after the Programme Monitoring Committee meeting on 19 March.
Advisory Group Membership
22 January 2008
Details of the Advisory Group members for each Priority of the Lowlands and Uplands ERDF and ESF Programmes have now been published under Applications Process section of the website.
Final version of Evaluation Plan
15 January 2008
The Evaluation Plan provides a framework and a context for achieving three key objectives through enhanced monitoring and evaluation systems under the new European Structural Funds Scotland Programmes. These are political accountability, improved programme management and performance, and the need to ensure that the current round of programmes builds in an exit strategy for projects and leaves a lasting legacy.
Effective and consistent evaluation across all funds will allow for synergy between them and also allow an assessment of their impact on the overall Scottish Economy. Both Plans will be made available from the ESEP website when they are finalised.
Programme Monitoring Committee Minutes
20 December 2007
The Minutes of the first meeting of the PMC, held on 8 November 2007, are now available for download. The next meeting of the PMC will be on 19 March 2008.
Update on First Application Round
28 November 2007
The deadline for the submission of Second Stage Applications for the First Application Round concluded on 9 November 2007. The following requests for ERDF and ESF support have been received under the challenge fund process. Figures in brackets are the full Programme allocation for each Priority:
European Regional Development Fund
Priority 1: 31 applications, £70.8m [£63.5m]
Priority 2: 38 applications, £63.0m [£84.2m]
Priority 3: 7 applications, £3.6m [£70.0m]
Priority 4: 7 applications, £3.6m [£24.3m]
European Social Fund
Priority 1: 90 applications; £53.0m [£83.5m]
Priority 2: 46 applications, £25.8m [£68.6m]
Priority 3: 28 applications, £13.5m [£29.4m]
In addition, the following Community Planning Partnership bids were received:
ESF Priority 1: 13 CPP bids, £41.8m
ERDF Priority 3: 13 CPP bids, £17.3m
In the coming weeks all Second Stage applications will be subject to technical and eligibility checks by the IAB and as a consequence the levels of grant requested by individual projects may be reduced.
Development of new IT Project Management System
23 November 2007
The Scottish Government are developing a new web-based IT project management system to manage the application and claims process for the new Scottish Programmes. The new system, called EUROSYS, will deliver substantial improvements for projects, through more user-friendly web-based technologies.
A key project development milestone will be at the end of March 2008 when it is anticipated that EUROSYS will be ready to use for submitting Quarterly Claim and Progress Reports for approved First Round applications.
The Scottish Government and ESEP are interested in your views as the project rolls forward. You can read more about the development of EUROSYS and how you can contribute to the process.
Final versions of Operational Programmes
19 November 2007
At the start of formal negotiations, in May 2007 The Scottish Government submitted the Lowlands and Uplands Scotland 2007-2013 ERDF and ESF Operational Programmes to the European Commission. As part of the negotiations, the documents were revised in preparation for formal approval. Both Operational Programmes have now been formally approved by the Commission. Partners can download the final versions of the Operational Programmes
Programme Monitoring Committee Membership
13 November 2007
More details on the Programme Monitoring Committee for the Lowlands and Uplands Scotland 2007-2013 Programmes, including a full list of members are now available. The PMC met for the first time on Thursday 8 November 2007.
Feedback on First Stage Application process
30 October 2007
All applicants who submitted a First Stage Application Form for their project should have received notification of the outcome. The assessment of applications has raised some common issues and these have been outlined in this Feedback Paper
Where there are project specific issues, Programme Managers will contact the relevant organisations to discuss in more detail.
Ministerial Launch of Operational Programmes
1 October 2007
Jim Mather MSP, Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism formally launched the new Lowlands and Uplands Scotland Programmes at an event in the Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow on 1 October 2007. Other speakers included Jose Palma Andres, Director of European Commission Directorate for Regional Policy and Professor John Batchler, Director of the European Policies Research Centre, University of Strathclyde.
Download Presentation Slides from: G. McLaren (ESEP) | Professor John Batchler;
Launch Speech from: Santiago Loranca Garcia
