Community action against crime: innovation fund

The Home Office has announced a new grant fund to encourage creative new approaches to tackling crime – the Community action against crime: innovation fund.

Apply for funding now

The application process is now open, and bids for this year are invited until 1 December 2011.

English applicants

Please apply using the forms and guidance on the on the Community Development Foundation website

Welsh applicants

See the forms and guidance in English and Welsh, and send your completed forms to caacfunding@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.
You can also see a version of this webpage in Welsh - Gweithredu cymunedol yn erbyn troseddu: cronfa arloesi

Applying for small and large grants

Please note that there are separate application forms and guidance notes for bids of small grants - £1,000-£15,000 and for large grants - £15,000 to £50,000. Please ensure that you use the correct application form.

The fund

Worth £5 million in 2011/12, with a further £5 million set aside for 2012/13, the innovation fund will be used to encourage greater community activism, and to enable communities to develop innovative approaches to tackling the local crime issues that matter to them.

We are particularly keen for the fund to be made available to grass roots community activists who are not traditional recipients of government grants.

We also want the fund to encourage effective partnerships to get everybody working together to tackle crime. The fund will be used to encourage voluntary and community groups to work with their community safety partnership to tackle local crime problems, including through co-design and co-delivery of initiatives to cut crime.

We will also look to support projects that successfully get local businesses involved, whether through match-funding, or direct participation in the project itself.

Criteria

To aid potential applicants, we have outlined the criteria that will be used to make funding decisions. All applications must show that they:

are innovative
deliver lasting benefit
have involved local communities
tackle crime issues that matter to the local community, with a particular focus on antisocial behaviour, crime in local neighbourhoods, substance misuse, re-offending, violence against women and girls, and youth crime

Desirable criteria

While we do not want to dictate how projects are delivered, we will award additional credit to applications that can demonstrate that they meet the following desirable criteria:

partnership working between the voluntary and community sector, and the local community safety partnership, or one of its constituent statutory agencies
partnership working between the voluntary and community sector and local private sector organisations. This could be through joint project working, or through match-funding (in cash, time, or goods and services provided without payment as a public service)
local community involvement in the design or the delivery of the project