Sport England Return to Play: Small Grants

Please note, this fund is now closed to applications. More details about the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Activity Fund will be announced in early 2022.

They will launch the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Activity Fund in January 2022, which will provide funding of up to £10,000 for sport and physical activity projects tackling inequalities and building stronger communities - more information about this fund will be available in due course.

The Return to Play: Small Grants fund seeks to support projects addressing the challenges coronavirus (Covid-19) has posed to people taking part in sport and physical activity.

A total of £10 million is available, with grants of between £300 and £10,000, to help not-for-profit community organisations create coronavirus-secure settings for community sport and physical activity to resume this autumn.

The fund will have flexible priorities, to be able to best respond to the frequently changing challenges posed to community sport.

These could include having to deliver sport and physical activity in smaller groups, having the correct sanitation and safety equipment, not having enough sports equipment to safely deliver activities and having the appropriate training for club volunteers to ensure you're meeting the current guidelines - more information on which can be found at the links below.

Funding could therefore be used for minor amendments to facilities, additional sports equipment, signage, sanitation and training courses to help you deliver your activities safely.

Unfortunately we only have limited funds available and may not always be able to fund all eligible projects.

When this happens we'll apply two levels of funding priorities which are based on the available insight.

Highest priority

• Projects located in areas of high deprivation (decile 1-3 of the Indices of Deprivation). To see which decile your project location fits into, you can use this postcode checker.

Other funding priories

• We particularly encourage applications from organisations working with communities who've suffered worse health outcomes and the most significantly reduced activity levels as a result of the pandemic. Our insight currently shows this to be girls and women, young people aged 16-24 and older people aged 70+.

Whilst the above are our priorities, it doesn't mean we won't support groups working beyond them, just that your application stands a stronger chance of success if it supports them and we have too many fundable applications.

We've always tried to address inequalities through our funding so encourage applications from organisations who support people on low incomes, people with a long-term health condition or disabled people, Black, Asian and other diverse communities, and LGBTQ+ people.

Responding to the relaxing of restrictions

As restrictions relax and activity becomes available again, the types of projects we can fund will change.

We'll assess your project against the current government guidance on safely returning to activity and we'll be unable to make awards that go against it.

Similarly, if you're requesting funding for adaptations that aren't currently required, we're unlikely to support those costs – even if it was correct at the time the application was submitted.

While most sports are now able to resume due to the current stage of the government's roadmap, we recognise that not everyone will want to return to what they were doing before and may be cautious about getting active again.

We'll therefore now consider new or expanded projects that will safely deliver activities allowing people to become active – addressing challenges their audiences faced during lockdown.

An example of this could be adding different sports to the provision previously offered by your organisation to offer people an alternative, or simply increase capacity to be able to deliver to more people at one time.

In assessing these new projects we'll be looking for innovative approaches to delivery that remove barriers and encourage all sorts of people to get active.

Running Costs

Only organisations based in, or are supporting, IMD 1-3 (Indices of Deprivation) can seek support towards ongoing running costs – for example, rent, utilities and insurance.

This is capped at a maximum of £1,000 and will only be considered with an eligible funding request – we'll not solely support only running costs.

Please see more details in the 'What we can fund' section below.

Eligible organisations/activities located in IMD 4-10 can apply to Return to Play: Active Together to seek support towards running costs.

The programme will close for applications on 23 December 2021.

We'll launch our Queen's Platinum Jubilee Activity Fund in January 2022, which will provide funding of up to £10,000 for sport and physical activity projects tackling inequalities and building stronger communities.