NWIEP's got the Dragon Factor

The North West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership assist the North West to obtain a better quality of life through enhanced public services in all sectors. It offers support, advice, expertise and funding to achieve improvement.

NWIEP holds that improvement must be three things:

• Supportive
• Sector-led
• Sustainable.

The latest round of capital funding available totals £3.7million and is available for capital projects that propose efficiency savings through innovative approaches.

A large number of applications for this fund are expected. In order to allocate the funds to the most appropriate projects in a transparent manner, NWIEP and its sub-regional partners will be hosting a series of 'Dragon's Den' styled pitch events.

Five events will be held at the sub-regions. Applicants will be expected to 'pitch' to a panel of judges who will question and score your proposal using information gained from both the presentation and the answers to questions derived from the criteria template. The projects that the sub-regions judge to be robust in fulfilling the criteria will be put forward to the regional final where projects will have to pitch again.

If your project covers a wider area and has no obvious sub-region, please choose one as a 'host'. This will not impact on whether or not you get funding as there is no specified funding split by sub-region. The sub-regions are:

• Lancashire
• Greater Manchester
• Merseyside
• Cheshire and Warrington
• Cumbria