Emergency Grant Process

There is provision within the Wandsworth Grant Fund for grants of between £500 and £10,000 to be made, on an exceptional basis, outside of scheduled bidding rounds on the grounds of urgency.

Criteria for applying

Criteria your application must meet:

• The applicant must be able to demonstrate the urgent nature of the request and why it was not possible to use the normal WGF process
• The proposed activity is of demonstrable benefit to the residents of the borough and represents good value for money
• The emergency grant is able to be deployed in quick measure to reflect the urgency of the requirement
• The standard eligibility must be met in terms of: the thematic priorities that we want to support, who we can fund and what we can fund
• We cannot give funding to projects below £500 as per the standard guidance and emergency grants cannot exceed £10,000
• You can apply for emergency funding as long as it was not something that was successful or indeed unsuccessful from a previous round of the Wandsworth Grant Fund. The emergency fund should not be viewed as a second chance opportunity to improve on a previous unsupported application. All applicants can apply in subsequent rounds with improved applications or materially different projects as we do not seek to fund the same organisations/ activities repeatedly
• You will only be able to apply for the Emergency Grant once only

Examples of emergency funding

Examples of urgency might be sports pitches being flooded during a season or premises having to close due to substantiated unsafe conditions with a need to hire external event space.

Process for applying

A formal request will need to be sent to the WGF team setting out the case against the above criteria. There is no formal application but your request (preferably by email) must set out clearly how it meets the above criteria.

This will then be considered by the Chair of the Grants Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Committee (or his deputy in his absence). Should the emergency grant be recommended, formal approval will be sought through delegated procedures and reported back to the next Grants OSSC. The WGF budget will be adjusted accordingly.

Each application will be assessed on a case by case basis and we may close Emergency Fund applications at any time, depending on funding availability. The decision to award funding under the emergency procedure is entirely at the discretion of Wandsworth Council.

We would aim to give a response as soon as is reasonably possible and you do not need to attain Councillor Endorsement from the primary ward of activity in Wandsworth. We cannot guarantee a turn around time of less than two weeks in making a decision and we cannot fund things retrospectively as per the standard guidance.

Email requests should be sent to applywgf@wandsworth.gov.uk only.