In 1995 Huddersfield Pride was born with the successful bid for SRB round 1 money for Huddersfield.

Huddersfield Challenge was a generic regeneration programme for the area stretching from Milnsbridge down the Colne Valley, taking in the town centre and along the Leeds Road corridor to Colnebridge.

Dalton, Rawthorpe and Moldgreen benefited from considerable investment in terms of both cash and humancapital/physical effort, creating a wide range of projects and initiatives available to residents, many of which continue beyond SRB.

The cornerstone of the original bid to government for SRB monies to help ‘reverse the decline’ of Dalton, Rawthorpe and Moldgreen was the participation of local people. To this end, the DRAM Programme ensured that the community was always at the heart of the decision making process, particularly in the development of strategy.

The DRAM Centre on Ridgeway was the major capital project and provides a focus for this continuing community involvement and the area continues to benefit from this and other now established community centres at St James’ and Greenfields Family Centre.

The regeneration process laid some strong foundations to support a culture of real partnership working. This culture is now firmly embedded and has ensured the continuation of a collective approach to developing local solutions to local problems, as well as exploiting opportunities that may arise from time to time.

In 1999 Huddersfield was awarded £15 million of SRB funds to improve the quality of life in the residential communities in the central parts of Huddersfield.

The bid for the funds was submitted to the Government by the Kirklees Partnership, a consortium of around 30 key agencies in the area.

The Programme ran for 7 years - from 1999 until 2006 - and in addition to the initial £15 million from central government attracted a further £56 million from other public and private sources before the programme ended in 2006. This all added up to a lot of investment in Huddersfield - £71 million in total.

The programme concentrated on improving quality of life in residential communities in the central parts of Huddersfield and built upon work started as part of Huddersfield Challenge and the Creative Town Initiative.

The programme had a wide ranging impact on Huddersfield and worked to improve many and varied areas, including childcare, employment, IT access, healthy living, out-of-town district centres and has assisted businesses, voluntary organisations and community groups. For more information on Huddersfield Pride, you can download the Huddersfield Pride Annual Review 04-05 (PDF 677 KB).