Policy information
Town and Village Renewal Scheme
From Department of Rural and Community Development
Published on
Last updated on
The Town and Village Renewal Scheme was first introduced in 2016. It is managed on behalf of the Department by the local authorities, and the programme is funded under Project Ireland 2040. The Scheme is targeted at towns and villages with a population of 10,000 or less and all projects funded under the Scheme must be completed within a 12 to 18 month period.
Since the launch of the Town and Village Renewal Scheme in 2016, over €154 million of funding has been approved for more than 1,700 projects across Ireland.
The Town and Village Scheme is one of a series of national and local support measures designed to rejuvenate small rural towns and villages throughout Ireland, under the Department of Rural & Community Development’s Rural Development Investment Programme
The Department of Rural and Community Development, through the Our Rural Future , Town Centre First and Our Living Islands policies, recognises the importance of creating and maintaining vibrant rural towns and villages, and we will continue to achieve this by delivering a wide range of strategic interventions and investments throughout the country.
The 2023 Town and Village Renewal Scheme is designed to support the revitalisation of rural Ireland through a renewed focus on town centre economic and social vibrancy and regeneration in line with the Town Centre First policy.
The types of activities supported in 2023 include:
- Investment in infrastructure to support town and village centre markets
- Projects bringing vacant and derelict buildings back into use as multi-purpose community spaces, or to address remote working needs
- Investing in the development of parks, green spaces and recreational amenities in town centres
- A new option to allow local authorities to acquire plots of land to enable development of town regeneration, such as town parks, plazas etc,
- Refurbishment to existing community centres
- Projects to support vibrant and sustainable island communities on Ireland’s inhabited offshore islands
The Scheme outline can be found here:
The Town and Village Renewal Scheme 2023 is now open and the closing date for receipt of applications is 10th November 2023.
Expressions of interest should be submitted through your Local Authority.
In recognition of the urgent need to transform and regenerate town centres a new measure to immediately acquire derelict or vacant buildings, with the intention of using these projects for town regeneration purposes in line with the aims of TVRS, the BAM was introduced in 2022.
The BAM is being retained under the 2023 Scheme and this year the measure will allow Local Authorities to apply to purchase up to 3 buildings up to a total grant amount of €500,000 per LA.
The Measure outline can be found here .
The Building Acquisition Measure for 2023 is now closed.
The Project Development Measure (up to €50,000) will support Development costs for strategic large scale projects that may be subsequently progressed with funding from the Town & Village Renewal Scheme e.g. detailed design, preparation for the planning and/or procurement, appropriate assessment etc.
