London Councils Funding

London Councils open the first phase of their Commissioning Grants

For any one that wasn’t able to attend one of the launch events last week, here is a quick summary of the key points:

• London Councils (previously Association of London Government - ALG) is an association of the Borough Councils and draws it’s funding from the boroughs
• They have a £28M grant budget to be distributed this year
• Rather than an open bidding system they have this year introduced 59 services that they wish to fund to be distributed in four phases, launching in: Feb, May, Summer & Late Summer
• Each service area has a detailed specification including a list of outcomes and funding allocations to specific boroughs
• Each service funded will need to have extensive and where possible full coverage across Greater London - LC’s will aim to achieve this by bringing together consortia’s where necessary and dividing the funding among these organisations
• Core and project funding is available for 3-4 years. No capital projects will be supported
• They are keen on supporting outer London Boroughs which they believe are less well served.

Application Process

To be eligible the organisation must be not-for-profit and able to work across more than one London Borough (by constitution and in practice) It was not made clear whether service users travelling from other boroughs to use a service based in a single Borough would satisfy this criteria. Individual cases should be put to LC.

Some of the services have a single stage detailed application where certain criteria make it more appropriate, the rest have a two-stage process with the first requiring much less detail

Many of the service specifications overlap or complement each other but one application will still be required for each.

The primary criteria for scoring applications will be the applicant organisations track record of service delivery and capacity to deliver the work.

Phase 1 is now open to applications. Service specs and application process can be found here

Summary details of all phases

Our Fundraising Consultants can provide further advice and an individual bid writing service on a day fee basis. If you are interested in this or any of our other services please get in touch.

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