Grant criteria
Local Papers – Big Lottery Fund
Grants of £10,000 to £30,000 (inclusive)
What BIG are looking for?
The Fund will fund projects that:




help talented people make their ideas a reality
allow people to develop and use their skills more
enable people and groups to work together
give groups who have never applied for Big Lottery Fund funding before a
simple and accessible opportunity to do so.
If your community has a great idea for how to spend a Lottery grant of between
£10,000 and £30,000 Big Lottery Fund could be for you. Whether you are looking to
run classes to get people more physically active, turn a derelict site into a community
garden, set up after-school cooking clubs, organise tea dances for isolated older
people, train young people to become more employable or help your community get
online, this funding can make the difference.
There is £250,000 available.
Who can apply?
To apply for a grant you will need to be a community group, not for profit group,
parish or town council, health body or school. You do not have to be a registered
charity to apply. Groups must have a bank account that requires at least two people
to sign each cheque or withdrawal and you must be in a position to use the grant
within one year.
Exclusions (these should not be publicised to applicants):





We cannot fund full cost recovery
We cannot fund day-to-day running costs of the organisation (for example utility
bills, council tax, rent, insurance).
However, for new organisations, please note that during the first 12 months,
costs associated with rent, insurance or similar can be classed as set up costs
rather than running costs.
We cannot fund part of a group’s normal rent for activities which are part of an
A4A project. We can only fund rent if the group are taking on new space and
paying an additional rental.
Project Management costs are eligible unless it states they are full cost recovery.
1


Existing activities (evidenced either from the application or on the group’s website
if they have one) : we cannot fund existing activities and repeat or regular events
to groups with an annual income of more than £30,000, unless it is more than 3
years since those activities or events took place, or unless they have been
developed, for example they are going to be run with new beneficiary types or in
a new area.
We cannot fund ongoing staff costs (including salaries of permanent or fixed term
staff)(more definitions on this below for further clarification)
Staffing
1a) Sessional Workers
A sessional worker is a person not employed under a contract of employment who is
paid for undertaking work or providing a service on the basis of an agreed range of
hours to be worked within a specified period, or on an ad hoc basis to meet varying
need. Sessional workers are not classed as employees, but there is a very fine line
between sessional workers and employees, which is often only tested in an
Employment Tribunal. If a sessional worker is offered or promised regular work, they
may become employees. Regular work means the offer of any number of hours on a
regular basis. It does not necessarily mean weekly, but even if a sessional worker is
offered a few hours each month, this may be deemed as regular enough for them to
be regarded as an employee in law. This is a complex area of law which we cannot
monitor at assessment and therefore have to assume when assessing applications
that groups have completed their own due diligence in this regard.
1b) Self-employed & Agency Workers
A self employed person could be taken-on on a sessional basis to undertake
particular duties as long as these did not amount to a contractual agreement - see
sessional workers above. An agency worker could not be taken on by a grant holder
on a sessional basis as there is a contract in place with the agency.
1c) Fixed term workers
Fixed-term workers have the same minimum rights as permanent workers. There are
special regulations protecting fixed-term employees, which define a fixed-term
employee as 'a person with a contract of employment which is due to end when a
specified date is reached, a specified event does or does not happen or a specified
task has been completed'. If someone is taken on as 'temporary', but without a
contract that will end on a particular date, event or completion of a task then they are
not covered by the regulations. The Fixed-term Employee Regulations only apply to
employees: people who have a fixed-term employment contract with the business
where they work. They don’t cover agency workers (‘temps’) who have a contract
with an outside company, apprentices, or students and other trainees on workexperience placements or temporary work schemes.
2