Pride organisers are celebrating the festival’s most successful year.

Pride Brighton and Hove have announced that an extra £40,000 has now been donated to LGBT and HIV charities and good causes in the city following the successful hosting of this year’s event.

The donation brings the total and final amount gifted by the community interest company behind the 2012 Pride event to £71,000.

The additional £40,000 was raised from donations collected during the Pride weekend which included the traditional city centre parade last month and the Preston Park party.

The money raised is more than double the original pledge of the organisers to raise £30,000 for charity.

The success of this year’s event is all the more remarkable as it was achieved with only 24 weeks of planning and follows on from the last seven Prides which failed to raise any money for charity.

Previous organiser Pride (South East) racked up debts of £200,000 during its time in charge of the event.

Funds will be distributed to local community groups by the Sussex Community Foundation with a grants panel meeting next month to decide beneficiaries.

LGBT and HIV/AIDS good causes have until tomorrow to apply for grants.

The latest cheque was presented on behalf of Pride Brighton and Hove by city
council leader Jason Kitcat to Paul Elgood of the Rainbow Fund.

Mr Elgood said: “We are delighted.

"This additional donation also provides an opportunity to look at how Pride as an event can become sustainable in the longer term with an end to it lurch-
ing from crisis to crisis as it has in the last few years.”

Pride director Trevor Edwards said the success of this year’s event was due to organisers “having a tight eye on the costs”.

He added: “What happened to the organisers before was that they were a very enthusiastic team of amateurs but did not have the full-time expertise to question and drive costs down.

"We had the same infrastructure for the park as last year but we brought costs down without cutting corners.”

To apply for funding visit www.sussexgiving.org.uk.