Falkirk Flight Community Fund
Scottish Canals, in partnership with principal contractor Mackenzie Construction Ltd, are embarking on the biggest programme of works on the Forth & Clyde Canal in decades.
It has been 25 years since the historic Millennium Link Project re-opened and revitalised Scotland’s Lowland canals. The oak lock gates installed at that time are approaching the end of their operational lifetimes and need to be replaced.
Scottish Canals is investing more than £3.5 million in replacing 10 lock gates and conducting other essential maintenance work along the Falkirk Flight of the Canal throughout 2025 and early 2026. This work is needed to ensure the Canal can remain open, safe and navigable for another 25 years and beyond.
Comprising a fifth of Scotland’s water, Scottish Canals’ network of canals and reservoirs play a variety of roles in the life of local communities. They are vital blue-green corridors running through our towns and cities, providing a rich urban ecosystem, opportunities for culture and tourism, as well as space for people to pursue active travel and leisure.
Introducing the new Falkirk Flight Community Fund
To give back to the local community during the works programme, we are opening a community fund to support local groups, organisations and communities in the Falkirk area.
Applicants can apply for a small cash sum to support their activity or obtain an allocation of workdays from the Mackenzie Construction team.
The Fund is wholly managed by Mackenzie Construction.
The criteria for awarding funds/workdays are as follows:
- Applicants should be not-for-profit groups, community groups or local organisations.
- Proposed projects must be within Falkirk, with preference given to those that have relevance to the canal network and/or are located in the areas nearest to this year’s programme of works from locks 3 to 16 (Falkirk West, particularly Camelon and Tamfourhill).
- Projects should contribute to the local community in one (or several) of the following ways (weighting will be given to projects that show the strongest relevance to one or more of these criteria):
- Bringing people together to build strong relationships in and across communities
- Improving the places and spaces that matter to communities by making them safer, healthier, sustainable, and more accessible
- Helping more people to reach their potential by supporting them at the earliest possible stage
- Supporting people, communities and organisations facing more demands and challenges because of the cost-of-living crisis
What can you apply for?
There are two ways in which our Fund can support your project: we can provide your organisation or group with a small grant (up to £1,000 per grant), or the Mackenzie Construction team can deliver work in kind (previous examples have been landscaping works for schools and hospitals, community clean-ups).
Application form
If you would like to apply for support from the Falkirk Flight Community Fund, please download the form and submit your completed application form to [email protected] by midday on 20th June 2025.
If you require further information or if you have communication support needs (for example, you would like to submit your application in another format), please contact us at: [email protected]
Review process
The panel at Mackenzie Construction will assess applications according to their relevance to the Fund’s stated objectives, with priority given to funds that have a direct connection to the Canal or to the communities living closest to the Falkirk Flight of the Forth & Clyde Canal.
We get a lot of applications, and many of them are for really worthwhile projects and causes. This means we have to make some tough decisions around which projects we can fund, when reviewing all the applications we’ve received. Therefore, there are often lots of projects we cannot fund, even the good ones.
Successful applicants will be notified by the 31st October. Due to anticipated volume of applications we will not be able to contact unsuccessful applicants to confirm our decision or to provide reasons for this.