£100m Transition Fund opens for business 2

Finance | Tania Mason | 30 Nov 2010

The government’s £100m Transition Fund for service delivery organisations in England that are facing cuts to their public sector funding, opens for applications today.

The Big Fund, which is administering the grants programme on behalf of the Office for Civil Society (OCS), has published its eligibility criteria online.

This shows that grants will range from £12,500 to £500,000 “depending on the reductions in taxpayer-funded income your organisation is facing”. As previously announced, recipients must have annual income of between £50,000 and £10m.

Organisations will only qualify for grants if they can meet all six of the criteria, including that at least 60 per cent of their total income in the most recent financial year came from taxpayer-funded sources, and that they spent at least 50 per cent of their income delivering frontline public services in specified causal areas.

Applicants must also have evidence, or substantial reason to believe, that between April 2011 and March 2012, their organisation will suffer cuts to their public sector funding of at least 30 per cent.

They must also have no more than six months' reserves.

They can apply for a grant of up to half of the reduction in taxpayer-funded income that they use to deliver frontline public services in England.

Applications will close on 21 January 2011.

Infrastructure bodies 'not eligible'

Neil Cleeveley, director of policy and communications at Navca, met with BIG on 11 November to discuss the Transition Fund. One of the issues he pressed BIG officials on was whether the Fund will make grants to infrastructure organisations.

Afterwards he said, in a statement to Navca members: “On the specific issue of whether the Fund will be available to support infrastructure, it was not categorically ruled out by any of the presentations or by the BIG officials present.”

Hurd visit to Age Concern Kingston

Minister for civil society Nick Hurd (pictured) marked the opening of the Fund with a visit to Age Concern Kingston. Kingston Council is being highlighted by the government as a model of good practice for local authorities working with civil society organisations to find new opportunities in public services.

Directory: Big Lottery Fund | National Association of Voluntary and Community Action

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John Marshall
CEO
Centrepoint Outreach
2 Dec 2010

Ref. criteria: "In some cases it may be appropriate for you to spend a small amount of your grant on continuing to deliver services.."
The demands on Homelessness services are likely to increase when the cuts and job losses bite. Why on earth would we wish to make cuts in a period of growing need! The phrase.. 'large print giveth... small print taketh away' comes to mind!
This would not help us. I am not seeking to reduce what we deliver!

[Reply]

Simon Hebditch
Consultant
2 Dec 2010

Lets see if I have got this right. If you are a direct service provider, to the front line, and receive at least 60% of your total income from the taxpayer, you may be eligible for a Transition Fund grant (as long as your income is between £50k and £10m per annum).

As long as you met the rest of the criteria, you could receive in a grant 50% of the reduction in taxpayer funding you are expecting. So, if you spend £100k in providing front line services paid from taxpayer income and you are expecting a cut of say 30% - meaning you will only receive £70k instead of your £100k - you could get a grant of £15k.

Wow - you are still out of pocket and would have to make cuts in the service. BUT it is worse than that! You are only supposed to spend the £15k on helping your organisation transform itself and re-structure etc - not on supporting the front line services. You would still have to absorb the £30k cuts to your direct service provision in this example!!

Sorry - it is a con!

[Reply]

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