Your Councillor Community Fund

Your Councillor Community Fund update

Your Councillor Community Fund is now open for applications for 2024/2025. Please contact your local County Councillor to see if they would like to support your project.

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Introduction

Each County Councillor has £5,000 of funding per year to support residents and community organisations to deliver activities that benefit local people in their neighbourhoods. This funding is known as Your Councillor Community Fund (YCCF).

YCCF funding is flexibly designed to support a huge variety of projects including:

  • purchasing sports equipment for local clubs.
  • the creation of websites to reach more residents.
  • transport costs for community outings.
  • environmental testing of local rivers.
  • skills training for vulnerable groups.

Select your local area to see what projects your County Councillors are supporting:

Our funding criteria

For your application to be considered, your project must support the residents in the County Councillor's division. The project must also demonstrate how it helps us to meet one or more of our eight focus areas:

  • Tackling inequality: Working with Surrey's residents to identify and address causes of inequality, especially in life expectancy.
  • Supporting independence: Helping residents help themselves and each other within their communities.
  • More joined up health and social care: Helping integrate health and council services so they're more effective, efficient and seamless for residents.
  • Creating a greener future: Tackling the causes of climate change to help Surrey become a carbon neutral county as soon as possible.
  • Embracing Surrey's diversity: Recognising the benefits of a diverse workforce and population to ensure Surrey is a place full of opportunity for everyone.
  • Partnership: Working with residents, businesses, partners and communities to collectively meet challenges and grasp opportunities.
  • Supporting the local economy: Investing in the infrastructure Surrey needs to build a strong and resilient economy.
  • Digital revolution: Making the most of new technology to innovate and improve local services, and how we work together, to help Surrey and residents thrive.

What we cannot fund

There are some legal and other organisational considerations that limit how YCCF funding can be used.

If your project involves the following, then funding cannot be awarded:

  • funding political organisations and/or political activities
  • teaching national curriculum subjects and/or learning-related activities contained in the annual School and Early Years Finance Regulations
  • supporting contentious planning matters or disputes
  • activities causing reputational damage and conflicts of interest for the council, including campaigns against the council or its statutory partners
  • ongoing staffing costs
  • projects that contravene any of Surrey County Council's agreed policies or priorities, including Surrey's net zero ambitions. For example, we won't fund any non-electric vehicles or any fossil fuel based energy solutions.

How to apply

If you are interested in applying for YCCF funding, it's very simple - here's how to do it:

  1. Make sure that your project fits within one or more of our 8 funding criteria.
  2. Contact your local county councillor to discuss your project and if it is something that they would like to support. Remember that councillors often get requests that exceed the amount they have available to allocate but they may be able to advise about other funding sources that could help you.
  3. Your local County Councillor will then send you a link to the online application form with instructions on how to complete it.
  4. If you need support during your application, our team can help. Just email us at yccf@surreycc.gov.uk.
  5. Once your application has been successfully submitted, you will receive an email confirming receipt. You will be given a unique reference number during the application process which you should note down and quote whenever you contact us about your application.
  6. Please remember to submit supporting documentation such as quotes, permissions and bank details so that the application can be assessed as quickly as possible.
  7. Once the team has assessed your application, you will receive an email informing you whether or not it has been successful.

Please note, we require all successful organisations to provide us with evidence that the project has been completed within 6 months. This helps us to account for how we have used our funding. It also provides images and information that we can use on our website and in our social media activities to share the benefit and impact of your project with the community.

Good luck with your application.

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