Enjoying Green Spaces and the Natural Environment

Your organisation must be one of the following:

• Registered charity
• Registered community interest company
• Registered charitable incorporated organisation
• Charitable company (incorporated as a not-for-profit)
• Exempt or excepted charity
• Registered charitable industrial and provident society or charitable cooperative (bencom)
• Constituted voluntary organisation

EGS is unable to pay for:

• Activities that do not have the relevant licensing/permissions
• Activities that have already taken place or start before we confirm our grant
• Any costs organisations incur when putting together an application
• Fundraising activities for an organisation or others
• Items that are purchased on behalf of another organisation
• Loans or interest payments
• Projects that actively promote religious or political activities
• Purchase of alcohol
• Refurbishment of buildings/capital works

Online applications can be submitted until the closing deadline in September. You should expect to get your decision in December, approximately 12 weeks from the closing date.

To apply for a grant, you will need to complete an online application form by the corresponding deadline and submit this electronically with your supporting documents.

We will only consider one application from your organisation at any one time.

All application forms should be completed through the City Corporation's online grants portal. Application forms in large print, Braille or audio would be offered to applicants by special request.

We actively encourage potential applicants to contact the CFCMT for an informal discussion of your proposal in advance of submitting an application. We do not consider draft applications but are able to talk through whether your organisation is eligible for funding and our priorities for funding. To arrange a pre-application discussion please email the CFCMT.

As part of your application we ask for a number of supporting documents. We require the following documents as part of your application:

• Organisation’s governing document. Depending on your legal status this may be a Constitution, Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association or Trust Deed. If you are part of the Church of England we do not need this document and you should attach a note stating that this is the case.
• Funding required spreadsheet.
• Most recent signed, audited or independently examined accounts.
• Relevant Job Description/s and Person specification/s. These should be submitted for any funded posts where the post holder will work more than 17.5 hours per week. Documentation should include the hours of work and pay rate or salary. The City of London is an accredited Living Wage employer. Any post paid for by a grant must be paid at least the London Living Wage.
• Safeguarding policy. We expect all organisations applying to the Enjoying Green Spaces and the Natural Environment strand to have considered their safeguarding responsibilities and to have suitable policies, procedures, reporting mechanisms and training in place to protect from harm all those who come into contact with the organisation including beneficiaries, staff and volunteers. Application organisations seeking funding for activities with or for young people and vulnerable adults must have a robust safeguarding policy in place. For more information see ‘What do you mean by safeguarding policy and procedures?’ in Community Infrastructure Levy Neighbourhood Fund – FAQ.

Once we have received your online application and all supporting documents, it will be passed to one of the City Corporation’s Grants Officers for assessment. As part of this process a member of the CFCM Team may contact you for more information.

We will acknowledge receipt of your application within 10 working days of it being received. If your application is not complete it will be returned to you and you will have a further 10 working days to send us the missing information.

We may also arrange to visit your organisation as part of the assessment process.

All applications that satisfy the eligibility criteria will be presented to Natural Environment officers for approval/rejection at an officer panel in December.

Once a full assessment has been completed, approved applications will be referred to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Open Spaces and City Gardens Committee for decision.

The timescale to process your application will vary; however, we will endeavour to ensure your application is assessed within 12 weeks of the closing date, with the panel every year in December. You should take account of this when planning your project.

If your application is successful, an initial offer letter detailing the level of grant awarded will be issued. This may contain special conditions relating to the grant award or pre-agreement grant conditions. All applications will need the relevant permissions/licensing in advance of any funding being released. 

Grant acceptance terms and conditions will be subsequently issued which should be signed and returned within 20 working days. Grantees will also be required to complete an online payment confirmation form via the portal, which includes attaching a recent bank statement.

Once all documentation has been received and approved you would be asked to formally request payment of your grant award.

Note: You cannot start your project until we have received, checked and approved all information that we have requested.

Revenue payments are usually released on a quarterly basis, while capital elements will be released when the CFCMT receive invoices for the relevant work.

If we fund your project, we will need you to complete an end-of-year and end of project grant monitoring report to confirm how the grant has been spent and what you achieved. Please make sure that you keep receipts for all the items or services you buy with the grant and that you keep them somewhere safe as we may ask you to provide them.

We may also visit you to check how the grant has been spent.

Please keep us up to date if your project or any of your contact details change at any stage during the period of your grant.

Due to the limited budget available and the number of applications for funding we receive, we unfortunately cannot provide funding to every applicant that applies for a grant. Grants are therefore issued on a discretionary basis; the decision of the City Corporation is final.

We encourage applicants to request feedback from your assessing officer on why your application was unsuccessful by emailing the CFCMT.

You may reapply for funding to deliver a continuation of the same project or a different project. However, organisations cannot hold more than one of our grants at any one time. Applicant organisations who have already received 3 years funding will be subject to a fallow period of 12 months before they can apply to the fund.

If you are a current grant holder, your project must have been completed and you will need to have satisfactorily met all our grant monitoring requirements before applying again.

In order to limit organisations becoming dependent on this funding stream, applications from new organisations are more likely to be successful than applications for repeat funding.