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New Find a Grant service could save up to £270 million
through increased efficiency and preventing fraud.
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Service will reduce duplication and cut time spent on grant
applications by 72%.
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Find a Grant also levels the playing field, with pilot
showing levelling up benefits, with 43% more funding awarded
to organisations in the north of England.
A brand-new UK-wide digital service for organisations applying
for government grants could save up to £270 million through
efficiencies and fraud prevention.
Cabinet Office Minister will launch the Find a Grant
service, which has successfully completed a pilot with four
departments, today (Wednesday 28 June) at the department’s second
headquarters in Glasgow.
The Minister will also meet with Enable, a Glasgow-based charity
supporting young people with disabilities into work across
Scotland. This charity has not only benefited from UK Government
grants but also worked with the Cabinet Office to help create the
Find a Grant system.
The first of its kind Find a Grant service offers a free central
place on GOV.UK for business,
individuals and organisations to find and apply for government
grants. Each year government awards over £50 billion in general
grant funding. Government grants can be awarded from anything
from improving local housing, to funding innovative new research
into advanced fuels and digital technologies, or providing better
sports facilities and youth centres for communities.
Currently most departments that provide grant funding have their
own services, which duplicate each other and can often be hard
for external organisations to find and access.
The new centralised service automates and standardises processes,
and cuts duplication, allowing the government to save taxpayer
money.
The service also makes it mandatory for departments to advertise
their grants and enables them to step up risk due diligence
and fraud prevention, through the Spotlight tool. This means that
savings and benefits to the taxpayer could be up £270 million in
two years, based on initial estimates following the pilot.
Reflecting the government’s priority to boost economic growth
across the whole of the UK and levelling up, the UK-wide service
increases the accessibility of grant applications and encourages
competition for funding from a wider range of applications. The
pilot has already seen a 43% increase in funding awarded to
beneficiaries in the north of England.
Results from the pilot service have been impressive, showing the
following improvements in quality and efficiency:
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72% reduction in time spent by officials on grant management,
resulting in huge cost savings for the taxpayer.
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Grant practitioners are twice as likely to use the Spotlight
tool, preventing irregular payments and catching fraudulent
applications upfront, therefore protecting the public
purse.
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34% reduction in the amount of time users spent on grant
applications.
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17% increase in customer satisfaction for making accessing
grants faster, simpler and fairer.
Piloted in partnership with the Department for Environment Food
and Rural Affairs, Department for Digital, Culture, Media &
Sport, Department for Business and Trade, and Ministry of
Justice, the service is already boasting impressive
results.
So far over 200 schemes - worth over £5.3bn - have already been
advertised on the new service, which 93,000 people have accessed.
The Cabinet Office will soon ensure that all eligible grants are
advertised in one place, as well as working with the devolved
administrations and local authorities to offer them the
opportunity to advertise on Find a Grant.
Theresa Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Enable,
said:
“Recent research has found that identifying and applying
for grant funding is a significant and costly challenge for too
many charities and social enterprises, diverting essential time
and resources away from delivering for our
beneficiaries.
The Find a Grant service cuts through so much of that.
This tool will make applying for grant funding a much faster and
more efficient process for the team at Enable and charities
across the country, boosting our sector’s productivity so we can
make a greater impact supporting and delivering services in our
communities.”
Notes to editors:
