Sustainable City Grants

• Your voluntary or community organisation must be based in the UK. Eligible legal forms are charities, charitable incorporated organisations (CIOs) and community interest companies (CICs) limited by guarantee. CICs must have an asset lock that keeps their assets for community benefit; CICs limited by shares are excluded.
• Activities must take place inside Cambridge’s city boundary and benefit residents or small and medium-sized enterprises there. You must show both financial need and the need among beneficiaries for the activity. Explain how residents with the most need, including people on low incomes, and businesses with fewer than 250 employees and less than £50 million turnover or £43 million balance-sheet total can take part or benefit. A previously delivered project must build on experience to increase its impact or address the priorities in an alternative or innovative way.
• Your group must be independently established for charitable, benevolent or philanthropic purposes, without private, commercial or personal profit. It must have at least three unrelated elected volunteers responsible for policy and overall management, and an appropriate legal structure and governing document. Volunteers must not be family members, spouses or civil partners, or live at the same address. Statutory bodies, groups established or managed wholly or partly by them, and groups promoting or appearing to support a political party or ideology are excluded.
• The group must not have a person registered at Companies House as having significant control with power to appoint or remove most directors, hold more than 50% of shares or voting rights, or exercise considerable direct or indirect influence or control over the company or its activities.
• Maintain current policies and procedures, follow and review them, meet applicable legal and regulatory responsibilities and, where relevant, employer duties and good employment practices. Hold adequate, appropriate and current insurance, and have provided satisfactory monitoring, accounts and other requested information on time for previous council funding. Groups that breached previous grant conditions or monitoring requirements, and organisations whose services or activities are restricted to paying members, cannot receive funding.
• Keep accurate financial records and annual accounts, and supply current whole-organisation income and expenditure accounts against budget. Use an account in the organisation’s name with two signatories. Grant funds must be held in an account regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority or Financial Conduct Authority and protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Follow effective financial procedures, including board or committee scrutiny. Update your reserves policy annually, distinguishing restricted and unrestricted funds and explaining their purpose and calculation, with designated reserves where relevant.
• CICs must show public benefit, community use of the grant and social impact. Potential benefits to directors, shareholders, family members, connected people or their businesses are assessed case by case; these arrangements are not automatically excluded, but governance must provide sufficient independent scrutiny to prevent undue private benefit. CIC grants are generally for a specific project or activity; the council does not normally give unrestricted grants. CICs must obtain their own independent advice on grant tax implications.

Provide the governing document, trustee/director/committee list, a bank statement from the last three months showing the organisation’s name and address, annual accounts if required, current whole-organisation accounts against budget, project risk assessments and insurance certificates. CICs also need their Community Interest Report (CIC34), Community Interest Statement (CIC36) and business plan. Policies must cover complaints, data protection, environment, equality and diversity, health and safety, reserves and safeguarding, with adoption and review dates. If required documents are missing, the council expects you to work towards supplying them as a condition of any award.

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Ouverture

4 août 2026

Clôture

22 sept. 2026 · 12:00:00 UTC+01:00

Conditions de cette période de candidature

• Activities must take place between 1 April 2027 and 31 March 2028 inside the Cambridge city boundary.[^c2]

The 2026 round is closed. Applications were submitted through Cambridge City Council’s grants portal from 4 August until midday on 22 September 2026. The council plans to assess applications by mid-December, present recommendations to councillors in January 2027 and confirm awards after budget approval in February. Approved grants or first instalments are paid in April.

The application must explain the activities, how you will deliver them, how they address the funding priorities and how you will quantify, measure, record and monitor activities, participants and outcomes. Include the required organisational documents and explain improvements if the project has run before.

The portal sends an automated acknowledgement; contact the council if it has not arrived within 24 hours. Support Cambridgeshire can help with applications, policies and financial information. The Cambridge Ethnic Community Forum can also support applications from minoritised ethnic communities, including migrants and refugees.