There are many groups and organisations carrying out excellent work in the Bradford district among a wide variety of people and across a range of issues.

These groups, though, very often have little or no funding save for charitable donations and they rely on volunteers to keep them going, meaning that the services they offer are sometimes provided hand to mouth.

So we should all be thankful for those national funding programmes such as Active Communities, which identifies groups and individuals doing great work in the community and secures money for them.

There are four charity groups in Bradford which have benefited from the latest round of funding, earning them each a share of a £112,000 cash pot.

Each of the groups does fine work in areas which are often under-represented when it comes to securing finance from the more mainstream funding streams, so grants such as these provide a lifeline for them and for the people they help.

Among the beneficiaries are the Bangladeshi Community Association, which received funding for a two-year project to improve social cohesion in the Bowling and Barkerend areas of Bradford; Bierley Community Association, which is tackling isolation among the over-60s; Asian Men’s Health, which is running a similar project for the over-50s in West Bowling, and Manningham-based BEAP Community Partnership, which will use its money to create community projects for people from the area.

It is to be hoped that this funding allows these groups to continue with, or complete, their projects and create better and healthier lives for all those people across the varied communities they work in.