Community Spaces and Inflationary Pressures Fund 2025
This new grant fund has been set up to support local voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations as they respond to the rising cost of living.
Aim of the fund
The fund intends to help boost the provision of community spaces and food in Wandsworth with a view to building capacity and sustainability, to enable people to keep warm and fed during winter and beyond, and reduce isolation. This includes social activities and those involving food for older people.
The fund will also support core programme costs for organisations who are struggling with the rising cost of living due to proven increased demand on their services (which directly support residents being impacted by the cost of living), with a focus on moving to longer term sustainability.
Eligibility
The funding is focused on projects directly supporting people affected by the rising cost of living, i.e. it is not open to the entire voluntary and community sector.
We are particularly interested in projects that:
- Build individual capacity and resilience, to help people to be more able to cope with future crises and financial shocks
- Build community capacity and resilience, to help provide the support that people need
- Identify and target particular groups of people most in need of support, be that by demography, income, geography etc
- Address key themes people are struggling with, such as food, energy, skills and income
- Have clear outcomes through which to demonstrate success, and a commitment to sharing regular monitoring information with the Council Cost of Living team
- Have a clear communication plan to engage target audiences, stakeholders and share achievements
- Demonstrate a clear sustainability plan beyond the funding requested, including additional/alternative sources of funding and contributions from the applicant organisation and/or service
- Represent a clear research approach, pilot phase and/or trial of a new approach from which learning will be taken and used to inform future plans
Grants available
With a budget of up to £200,000, the fund will award grants of between £2,500 and £15,000. It will enable voluntary and community organisations to deliver activities for up to a maximum of 12 months.
There are two main priorities to this funding:
- Priority 1: Funding for projects that support residents with the rising Cost of Living, in particular community spaces and food projects with a focus on building capacity and sustainability
- Priority 2: Funding core programme costs for organisations who are struggling with inflationary pressures due to proven increased demand on their services (which directly support residents being impacted by the cost of living), with a focus on moving to longer term sustainability
This funding is only intended to see organisations through a time of increased demand and inflationary pressures and should be considered as one-off funding. Therefore, applicants will be asked to consider how they can build their resilience and core service capacity to operate on a more sustainable footing in the future.
Applicants for priority 2 must be able to demonstrate the increased demand for their services and that these services are directly supporting residents due to the impact of the rising cost of living, whilst supporting residents to move on to a longer-term sustainable position and not being reliant on their services.
How to apply
If an organisation has applied to the Wandsworth Grant Fund for the same or a similar project under one of its themes e.g. Health and Wellbeing, then this will be taken into consideration and the application will be considered a lower priority. The same applies for any other current council funding.
There is limited funding available, and organisations should make sure that their project closely aligns with the priority areas of the fund.
Before submitting an application, read the guidance notes and check that you meet all of the funding requirements.
Please send a signed copy of your application, together with your supporting documents, to wgf@wandsworth.gov.uk.
The deadline for applications is 9am on Monday 22 September 2025.
What happens next
The Grant Sub-Committee will meet to decide how to distribute the grants on Thursday 6 November 2025.
Projects are to begin between November 2025 and January 2026.