Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund - terms and conditions

In these terms and conditions, The National Lottery Community Fund is referred to as “us” or “we”, and the organisation that is awarded a grant is referred to as “you”. We refer to the project, event or activity described in your application, or as otherwise agreed with us, as “the project”.

1. By accepting this grant, you agree to:

1.1. hold the grant on trust for us and use it only for your project;

1.2. use the grant only during the term of the project as agreed with us;

1.3. start your project and draw down the first instalment of the grant within one month of signing the grant offer letter, unless otherwise agreed with us;

1.4. provide us or any supplier appointed by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) appointed to carry out post-grant assurance activities or evaluation activities, promptly with any information and reports including relevant monitoring information we require about the project and its impact on your community, both during and after the end of the project;

1.5. work with any third party we or DCMS may contract with or appoint for the benefit of the project and/or this funding programme;

1.6. obtain our written consent before making any significant changes to your project or to the status, ownership or constitution of your organisation;

1.7. let us know promptly about any significant issues or delays with your project or about any fraud, other impropriety, mismanagement or misuse in relation to the grant or any legal claim and/or investigation made or threatened against you, any member of your governing body, or any organisation, employee or volunteer working on the project;

1.8. act lawfully in carrying out your project, in accordance with best practice and guidance from your regulators, and follow any policy or guidelines issued by us in relation to the programme or use of the grant;

1.9. advance equality of opportunities in line with the law and any guidelines issued by us;

1.10. if the grant is for a salary of a new post, advertise the vacancy externally unless otherwise agreed with us, and carry out a fair and open recruitment process in line with the law and any guidelines issued by us;

1.11. acknowledge the grant funding using the required logo in accordance with the relevant guidelines for recognising your grant, which can be found in your offer letter;

1.12. hold the grant in a UK based account or building society account, which is in the legal name of the organisation that is applying for funding from the National Lottery Community Fund;

1.13. has effective financial controls and banking arrangements in place so that no single individual has sole responsibility for any single transaction from authorisation to completion and review and adheres to our guidance on financial controls and banking arrangements;

1.14. treat the grant paid for future activity as restricted funds in your annual accounts using the reference “The National Lottery Community Fund” and the programme name “Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund” and if required by us, open a separate designated bank or building society account for each grant from us for the sole purpose of receiving and administering that grant.

1.15. treat the grant paid for retrospective costs as unrestricted funds in your annual accounts.

1.16. immediately return any part of the grant that is not used for your project or that has not been spent by the 31 March 2024 as agreed with us;

1.17. comply with our safeguarding policy for grant holders;

1.18. have an appropriate written whistleblowing policy and procedure/s in place, ensure the policy and/or procedures are publicised internally and ensure that staff are trained on its principles and operation, review and update your whistleblowing policy and procedures at least every two years;

1.19. comply with all applicable data protection legislation as amended including the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation which took effect from 21 January 2020 and the Data Protection Act 2018, as amended from time to time;

1.20. keep accurate and comprehensive records about your project both during the project and for seven years afterwards and provide us on request with copies of those records and evidence of expenditure of the grant such as original paper or electronic receipts, invoices and bank statements;

1.21. confirm that you will co-operate with any research or evaluation-related activities which the appointed evaluation services supplier of DCMS carries out and further confirm that we may share with the appointed evaluation services supplier of DCMS any part of your application and/or project information for to use research or evaluation purposes;

1.22. allow us and/or the Comptroller and Auditor General reasonable access to relevant premises and systems to inspect the project and grant records. You agree that it may be necessary for you to share relevant Personal Data (as defined in the UK GDPR) with us in order to fulfil your obligations under this clause. You will be transparent about your obligations under this clause with your beneficiaries (Data Subjects (as defined in the UK GDPR)) and ensure you have a lawful basis to share any relevant Personal Data with us in order to comply with this clause; and

1.23. us publicising and sharing information about you and your project including your name and images of project activities. You hereby grant us a royalty free licence to reproduce and publish in any format any project information you give us. You will let us know when you provide the information if you don’t have permission for it to be used for these purposes.

2. If any part of the grant is used to buy goods or services, or to buy or develop intellectual property, costing more than £10,000 you will:

2.1. carry out a competitive tender for the goods and/or services and comply with UK procurement rules if applicable to you;

2.2. use assets purchased or enhanced using the grant only for the project and keep them safely, in good repair and condition and adequately insured for the life of the project;

2.3. protect any intellectual property rights purchased or developed using the grant and not commercially exploit these rights without our prior written consent; and

2.4. obtain our prior written consent for any disposal of assets purchased, developed or enhanced using the grant and if required, pay us a share of proceeds from such disposal.

3. You acknowledge that we are entitled to suspend or terminate the grant and/or require you to repay all or any of the grant and/or impose additional conditions in the following situations. You must let us know if any of these situations have occurred or are likely to occur.

3.1. You use the grant in any way other than as approved by us or fail to comply with any of these terms and conditions, or any additional conditions set out in our grant offer to you.

3.2. You fail to make good progress with your project or are unlikely in our view to complete the project or achieve the impacts agreed with us.

3.3. You have match funding for the project withdrawn

3.4. You receive or fail to declare any duplicate funding for the same project costs as funded by the grant.

3.5. You provide us with false or misleading information, either on application or after award of the grant, act dishonestly, or if you or anyone involved in the project or your organisation is under investigation by us, a regulatory body or the police.

3.6. You do or fail to do anything that brings us or the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund into disrepute, or which we consider for any reason puts public funds at risk, or we terminate or suspend any other grant we have given you.

3.7. You enter into, or in our view are likely to enter into, administration, liquidation, receivership or dissolution.

3.8. You receive any grant money incorrectly either as a result of an administrative error or otherwise. This includes where you are paid in error before you have complied with your obligations under these terms and conditions and grant offer letter. Any sum, which falls due under this paragraph 3.7, shall fall due immediately. If you fail to repay the due sum immediately, or as otherwise agreed with us, the sum will be recoverable summarily as a civil debt.

4. You acknowledge that:

4.1. by accepting this grant:

4.1.1. you confirm that the information in your application has been authorised by the governing body of your organisation;

4.1.2. your organisation is able to deliver the project described in your application; and

4.1.3. you understand that the grant is not consideration for any taxable supply for VAT purposes;

4.2. the grant is for your use only and you may not share or transfer the grant (or any part of it) to anyone else unless we have given you our prior written approval.

4.3. the grant comes from public funds and you will not use it in a way that does not comply with the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and associated regulations as amended from time to time. If the grant is deemed to be an unlawful subsidy, you will repay the entire sum with compound interest immediately.

4.4. we have no liability for any costs or consequences incurred by you or third parties that arise either directly or indirectly from the project, nor from non-payment or withdrawal of the grant, save to the extent required by law; and

4.5. these terms and conditions will continue to apply for (i) one year after payment of the last grant instalment; or (ii) until the project has been completed; or (iii) for as long as grant monies remain unspent; whichever is longer. Clauses 1.4, 1.5, 1.11, 1.14, 1.15, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.21, 1.22, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 shall survive termination or expiry of these terms and conditions.

This offer is also subject to the following additional conditions:

This offer is made using funds from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (“DCMS”). By signing this offer letter, you are:

• agreeing that The National Lottery Community Fund (the Fund) may share any serious safeguarding concerns with DCMS;
• acknowledging that DCMS may carry out assurance checks to ensure that grants funded under the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund (which may include your Grant) have been spent in accordance with our grant agreement with you. The supplier that DCMS choose to undertake post-grant assurance may contact you about this after the Grant has been made or spent and we may provide the supplier with your contact details for this purpose.
• acknowledging that DCMS will carry out an evaluation of grants made under the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund (which may include your Grant) and confirming that you will work with the evaluators appointed by DCMS in order to obtain and publish evidence, data and learning from the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund. We may pass your organisational contact details to the evaluator for this purpose (see Privacy Notice). This may include your organisation taking part in the following evaluation activities:
  • a short survey about your experience of the Fund's service to you (customer satisfaction)
  • an end of grant survey, this will include questions on: the number and type of activities you’ve run using the Grant funding, the number of beneficiaries reached due to the Grant funding, number of volunteers and/or staff mobilised due to the Grant funding, the difference the Grant funding made, what you achieved, who you worked with and whether this Grant funding gave you access to funding from elsewhere.
  • sending a survey to your volunteers and/or beneficiaries about their experience.
  • a smaller sample of grant holders will be invited to take part in more in depth, qualitative research
  • sharing learning and insight for other organisations who received grant funding from the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund