Knowsley Community Fund

• Requests for funding of up to £2,000, £5,000 and £10,000 are allowable.
• There will be one call for funding during the 2025/2026 financial year (commencing in June 2025) and funding will remain available until such time as the budget of £0.560m is exhausted.
• Applications will be reviewed, and recommendations will be made to the Council’s Cabinet for final approval.
• Direct beneficiaries of intervention must come from Knowsley.
• The funding cannot match fund pan-Liverpool City Region projects.  Funded activity must be exclusive to Knowsley.
• All requests for funding must be on the application form developed specifically for this Fund.
• The impact on the Fund against the priorities must be demonstrable.
• Unless otherwise specified by the Council, applicants are required to maintain records to evidence the impact of their interventions for scrutiny and inspection by the Council for six years following receipt of funds.  This will include evidence relating to payments, financial records, and outcome monitoring reporting and will be regardless of whether any costs will be incurred by the organisation to retrieve such records.
• Applicants are required to publicise the Knowsley Community Fund in any marketing for their intervention and make clear the direct support that has been provided by Knowsley Council.
• Within approximately 15 weeks of the call for applications, applicants will be informed of whether their submission has been successful.
• Payments will only be processed following receipt of signed grant agreements and agreement to the Fund’s conditions upon submission of the application form.
• Council officers and One Knowsley staff are available to support groups to develop ideas which meet the required criteria.
• Groups can apply to receive one allocation of each funding as follows, one allocation of up to £2,000, one allocation of up to £5,000 and one allocation of up to £10,000 per organisation (three applications in total)
• Applicants will need to declare that all effective insurance, DBS, safeguarding and health and safety compliance is in place and provide associated documentation where necessary and upon request.
• Early notification of the inability to spend funding within the allocated time period will be encouraged to enable funding to be reallocated.
• Any unspent funds remaining at the end of the project period must be returned to the Council.
• All projects will be required to be delivered within a fixed time period as set out within the grant agreement and conditions.

Please be aware that a full audit trail of evidence of expenditure and outcomes should therefore be retained for inspection.  Appropriate checks may be carried out by the Council’s Internal Audit team. This might take place at any point within a six-year period of receiving the grant.

Applicants should note that failure to comply with requests for information such as evidence of spend, monitoring returns or compliance documents will result in ineligibility for future funding programmes.

Additionally, at the end of each Funding period, a selection of projects will be selected for full audit.

Knowsley Council has a zero-tolerance approach to fraud/corruption.