Deprived Greater Manchester areas get £1m lottery funds

Three deprived areas in Greater Manchester are to get £1m each from The Big Lottery Fund.

People in Collyhurst, Manchester; Tonge and the Haulgh, in Bolton; and Ridge Hill, Stalybridge, will get a chance to decide how to spend the cash.

The money could be spent on anything from creating new community facilities to training and employment schemes or providing more youth activities.

It is taken from a £200m Big Lottery Fund scheme called Big Local.

Helen Bullough, head of the Big Lottery Fund's North West region, said the funds, which will be given to each area over a 10-year period, were targeting places that had "missed out on lottery or other sorts of funding and areas that have high levels of disadvantage".

She said the decision on how the funds would be spent would be taken by local people, as "people who live in communities tend to know what they want".

"What we'll be doing next is working with those areas and identifying people and organisations who might want to get involved," she said.

She added that events would now be held to encourage community engagement with the project.