2 Supporting grant applicants
11. Grant applicants incurred significant costs in
the grant-making process. In many cases, the application process
was complex and burdensome, and applicants spent considerable
time and effort submitting applications even though they might
not have a high chance of being successful. The estimated average
number of days spent preparing an application to the programmes
covered by the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report ranged
from five days to 21 days (Figure 2). None of the grant-makers
themselves had measured the time applicants spent on the process.[12]
Figure 2:
Estimated time spent by grant applicants preparing applications
in 2006-07
| GRANT PROGRAMME
| MEDIAN NUMBER OF DAYS PREPARING APPLICATIONS
| NUMBER OF APPLICATIONS IN
2006-07
| ESTIMATE OF EQUIVALENT NUMBER OF FULL TIME EMPLOYEES
|
| Arts Council England
Grants for the Arts - Individuals
| 12 |
3,712 |
202 |
| Arts Council England
Grants for the Arts - Organisations
| 7 |
4,412 |
140 |
| Big Lottery Fund
Awards for All England
| 5 |
18,528 |
421 |
| Big Lottery Fund
Reaching Communities
| 21 |
6,421
outline proposals
| 613 |
| Sport England
Community Investment Fund
| 6 |
899 | 25
|
| English Heritage
Repair Grants for Places of Worship
| 5 |
489
new applications
| 11 |
| Total
| 1,412
|
Source: C&AG's Report, Figure 15
12. The largest amount of time was spent preparing
applications to the Big Lottery Fund's Reaching Communities
programme. At an estimated 21 days per application, this was equivalent
to about 613 staff working full time to prepare applications during
2006-07. When asked why this process was so onerous, the Department
said that (for successful applicants) it considered the rate of
return on these resources was high given that the average grant
value was £221,000.[13]
13. For most of the open application programmes covered
by the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report, around 40 to
50% of applications were successful. On the Reaching Communities
programme, however, only one in five applications was successful
in 2006-07, with just 452 awards made. This suggested to us that
few communities were being reached. The Big Lottery Fund explained
that it referred unsuccessful applicants to Reaching Communities
to its other programmes which also funded community projects.
Since the C&AG's Report, the Big Lottery Fund had sought to
reduce costs to applicants by introducing a much tighter outline
proposal stage for Reaching Communities applicants.
This had allowed them to guide people as to whether they had
any realistic chance of being awarded a grant at an earlier stage
of the process, and on the basis of a much shorter application
form. In 2007-08, over 60% of potential applicants had been advised
not to proceed with their grant application at this early stage,
thus preventing them having to commit the considerable time needed
to make a full application. This had also helped the Big Lottery
Fund reduce its own costs as, whilst it took two and a half hours
to process an outline proposal, it could remove the need to spend
15 and a half hours processing a full application.[14]
14. Reaching Communities was the Big Lottery
Fund's most open programme and funded a wide range of projects
in the voluntary and community sector, including those with an
environmental, health and education focus. Consultations with
the sector had shown that applicants valued the opportunity to
"have a go" at the money on the Reaching Communities
programme, even though there was a high failure rate. The
Big Lottery Fund was planning to consult further on its post-2009
programmes, including on its open programmes for larger sums of
money.[15]
15. Time in the grant-making process is also spent,
by both the grant-maker and the grant applicant, in submitting
and processing incomplete or inaccurate applications. In 2006-07,
62% of initial applications to the Big Lottery Fund's Awards
for All programme were incomplete or were missing information
such as bank statements and references. Many of the applications
were from people applying for Lottery money for the first time.
At the time of our hearing, the level of incomplete applications
had fallen to around 50% following the introduction of improved
guidance for applicants. However the Big Lottery Fund conceded
that this was still not good enough. The Arts Council had also
recently simplified its application form following user testing.[16]
16. Successful grant applicants reported high satisfaction
with the grant-makers' processes (Figure 3), while, as
one would expect, satisfaction was much lower among failed applicants.
Sport England's Community Investment Fund received the
lowest satisfaction rating of the eight programmes covered by
the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report. Sport England explained
that, based on anecdotal evidence, applicants had found parts
of its process quite onerous, especially where they had had to
work with Sport England to improve the quality of their sport's
development plan. Sport England was looking to replace the Community
Investment Fund and wanted to learn from its current process
to offer a better experience for applicants in the future. [17]
Figure 3: Applicants satisfaction with grant-making programmes
Source: C&AG's Report, Figure 17
17. Grant-makers told us that they provided support
to grant applicants in various ways, such as through telephone
helplines and websites. The Big Lottery Fund provided outreach
support through its regional offices. It had invested much effort
and time through its outreach operations, as well as through partners
such as voluntary sector organisations and local authorities,
to support applicants in the grant-making process to improve their
chances of success. But successful outcomes also depended on the
extent to which local authorities helped the voluntary sector
with grant applications, as there was a limit to how much outreach
activity the Big Lottery Fund could undertake.[18]
18. We were also concerned that the burden placed
on grant applicants may have created a role for consultants to
help them with applications. Grant-makers could not tell us to
what extent consultants were advising grant applicants, or if
such activity was distorting the application process by making
it more likely that applicants employing consultants would receive
funding.[19]
19. The Department does not direct grant-makers to
channel funding into particular areas. It told us that decisions
on which projects to fund were solely for grant-makers, who were
the experts on such matters. The Department did, however, issue
`policy directions' to lottery distributors on matters which they
must take into account when making decisions on lottery funding,
including ensuring equal access to funding and seeking to reduce
deprivation. The Department recognised that there was a cost to
achieving a geographical spread of applications, including those
from different backgrounds or traditions which might not naturally
look for public funding. For lottery funded bodies, it placed
reliance on the chairs and trustees of the bodies, who were in
a sense the representatives of the would-be applicant, to make
sure that the highest proportion of lottery money went on grants,
and that the minimum went on their administration.[20]
20. We asked English Heritage about a grant awarded
in 2007, of £127,000, to the Losang Dragpa Buddhist Centre
to fix a leaking roof and preserve the intricate stone-work and
tower on a Grade II listed building in West Yorkshire. We understood
that the Losang Dragpa Buddhists had since moved to France and
the building was now up for sale. We were assured that the majority
of the grant had not been taken up in this case. Of the £127,000
awarded, English Heritage had paid out £7,500 before it became
aware of the building's sale and had halted further payments.
English Heritage planned to seek repayment of the £7,500
once the sale of the building had been completed.[21]
12 Q 21; C&AG's Report, paras 3.4, 3.6, 4.2 Back
13
Qq 33, 35, 37 Back
14
Qq 65-66, 86; C&AG's Report, para 4.2 Back
15
Qq 59-60 Back
16
Qq 28, 30-31, 40 Back
17
Qq 109-111; C&AG's Report, para 3.9 Back
18
Qq 51, 58, 127 Back
19
Q 64 Back
20
Qq 121-124; Ev 18 Back
21
Qq 78-79; Ev 23 Back
|
