Warm Welcome Spaces Grants
About the Warm Welcome Spaces Grants
Both Adur District and Worthing Borough Councils want to do more to help their communities to address cost of living impacts.
For the last two winters, we have run a grants programme for groups and organisations to deliver warm spaces across Adur and Worthing to support those in need. This has continued to be a success and we are pleased to be able to offer a grants programme again this year. We have developed the programme following feedback from spaces that operated over the last couple of years, local insight data and national best practice.
This year we are closely aligning our offer with the national Warm Welcome Campaign, which emerged as a collective response to build a movement for a fairer and friendlier society by supporting warm and welcoming spaces in every community in the UK.
We are asking groups and organisations to support us in delivering spaces across Adur and Worthing that are open, welcoming for all, accessible, safe and free to our communities to come inside and warm up. We want to ensure that anyone who is cold knows where they can go to get warm, stay warm and enjoy a bit of company.
The Warm Welcome Grant aims to give groups and organisations some financial support to open their venues up as warm welcome spaces, in addition to their normal activity.
We are particularly keen to support our community centres & hubs within Adur and Worthing to open their doors to the community, as well as those who can offer evening and weekend provision. We will be prioritising areas where there has been an identified gap in existing provision or where there is local need.
A grant of up to £600 per warm, welcome space is available. This can be used to offset a range of costs for example, energy costs, the cost of refreshments, activity costs, materials needed, or running costs including staff or volunteer costs.
Grants will be awarded to not-for-profit organisations, who own or lease their own building and are able to deliver a warm welcome space this winter.
Basic funding criteria
Grants will be awarded to not-for-profit organisations, working for the benefit of Adur and/or Worthing communities.
Your group does not have to be a registered charity to apply, but you do need:
- a constitution or set of governing rules
- accounts or records of expenditure
- a bank account; or a partner organisation willing to hold the money for you
- to have suitable and relevant policies (such as safeguarding or insurance) to run your project as appropriate
- to own or have a lease on the building in which the warm space will be operating in
- to be ready! You'll need to start spending the money within a month of receiving the grant
- to be prepared to sign up to the Warm Welcome Spaces Charter:
What does the grant fund cover?
The Warm Welcome Spaces Grants are designed to enable and facilitate groups/ organisations, through providing funding to offer additional warm spaces to the community. The aim is to mitigate the inequality, reduce social isolation and provide support to address community concerns around the cost of living, whilst staying and being well.
We want to receive bids for fundings that provide additional activity and/or open a warm space that would not be open otherwise. The fund will cover the following expenses:
- purchase or hire of resources - eg kettles, craft materials
- staff/volunteer time/expenses
- energy costs
- anything else that enables the space to be open, welcoming and sustained
The grants will not be available to groups that:
- deliver projects that don't benefit the residents or communities of Adur and/or Worthing
- discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, disability, age, or sexual orientation
- want to make retrospective payments for activities that have already taken place
- deliver projects which only benefit animals
- carry out political activities
- want funds to carry out capital improvements or maintenance to the building the warm space will be held in
- are close to a local library hub, where there is existing warm space provision
How do I apply?
Sorry - the closing date for applications was 15th December 2024. We are not currently taking any more applications.
See: Find a Community Warm Welcome Space
To give you some more information about how a warm welcome space works we have attached a guide delivered by the Warm Welcome Campaign led by a coalition of 50 charitable organisations who joined together in response to the Cost of Living Crisis to provide emergency support to communities struggling to pay for rising food costs and to heat their homes:
What happens once I've applied?
We will email you to acknowledge receipt of your application. Once received we will check that your application meets our criteria, is eligible and that we have all the relevant documents.
We will email you to acknowledge that we've received your application form.
We will be assessing applications in the order they are submitted. Final decisions will be made on your application by the 13th November 2024 at the latest. This will allow two weeks mobilisation to start on or after 1st December 2024.
Any further questions?
If you have any queries, please email:
If you are a new or existing organisation and would like advice, support, learning and networking opportunities with other voluntary organisations across Adur and Worthing - then get in touch with Community Works:
See also:
Community Warm Welcome Spaces have opened up across Adur and Worthing - meaning residents will have somewhere to keep warm for free this winter. For details see:
Cost of Living Roadmaps for each authority were drawn up in 2022 setting out what the councils would do to try to help local residents and communities through these difficult times:
Page last updated: 16 December 2024