Aberdeenshire Community Planning Secures £12.5 Million for Households
Annual report highlights significant progress in tackling poverty and embedding place-based planning across the region.
By Kirsty Lennox
••3 min read
AI
A scenic Scottish glen representing community planning and rural development in Aberdeenshire.
The Aberdeenshire Community Planning Partnership has successfully secured over £12.5 million for local households in the past year, according to its latest annual report.
The annual report details the Partnership's engagement with community bodies during 2025/26, assessing the effectiveness of efforts to empower communities in shaping local planning. It also outlines advancements towards the priorities set out in the Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP) and related locality plans.
The report presented to the Aberdeenshire Community Planning Partnership Board indicated strong progress in achieving the strategic goals of reducing poverty and integrating place-based community planning. Partners have continued to collaborate with communities to enhance outcomes, decrease inequalities, and ensure local residents play a key role in influencing services and investment decisions throughout Aberdeenshire.
Initiatives aimed at combating poverty and inequality placed a particular emphasis on rural communities, addressing challenges such as transport costs, fuel poverty, access to services, and childcare.
Over the year, the Partnership's activities supported more than 40,300 individuals and over 24,200 households through a combination of financial inclusion, employability, wellbeing, and cost of living programmes. More than 20,500 residents accessed advice and support services, resulting in financial gains of £12.5 million for local households via income maximisation, welfare advice, and debt support, with over 12,800 households receiving assistance to lower their living costs.
Employability support was also enhanced, leading to 232 individuals and 77 young people securing employment, with nearly 2,300 receiving overall support. Targeted assistance included helping parents find and maintain work, and establish new businesses, such as childminding services to address local childcare deficits.
The importance of lived experience remains central, with over 1,150 residents actively contributing to service design, training, funding decisions, and strategic planning. Children and young people are also increasingly involved, notably in the development of the Aberdeenshire Youth Rights Ambassadors initiative.
A total of eight Partnership Place Plans are currently being developed across Aberdeenshire, aiming to foster stronger collaboration between communities and public services, and to ensure local priorities inform future planning, investment, and service delivery.
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"It’s very pleasing to see the meaningful difference community planning activities are making in our communities, and the increased focus on place is allowing us to even better support local needs."
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"We’ve seen new place plans established in Banff and Buchan, Garioch, and Kincardine and Mearns, with a number of others in development. We’ve also seen progression of the Peterhead 2040 vision and the Cultural Quarter project in Buchan, and continued community asset transfers and participatory budgeting initiatives in Marr."
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"These positive outcomes have all been made possible through excellent partnership working, early intervention, community empowerment and lived-experience approaches, and place the Partnerships in a strong position for its ongoing work."
The full LOIP annual report is available at https://bit.ly/LOIP2026, and further information about the Aberdeenshire Community Planning Partnership can be found at www.ouraberdeenshire.org.uk/.
