Decision

To agree the Stratford-on-Avon District Council Community/Warm Hub Grant Support Scheme 2026 grant scheme design, guidance notes and application process.

Reasons for the decision

Following the report here approved by the Cabinet on 6 July 2026 a budget of £25,000 be established from the Business Rates Equalisation Reserve, which warm hubs can apply to for funding to maintain and enhance their provision. We plan to distribute financial support to qualifying applicant organisations to enable them to achieve our aim of:

Support, prolong and enhance community wellbeing activity through community/warm hub events bringing together members of the whole community but with a focus on more vulnerable residents.

We are looking to support community/warm hubs meeting the below objectives:

• Improving the sustainability of community/warm hubs through providing funding for venue hire or similar;
• Improving experience through enhancing activities held at the community/warm hub;
• Improving the administration of the community/warm hub through funding administrative costs, including insurance, compliance costs, DBS checks, energy bills, or similar; and
• Provision of funding to cover other costs associated with the development and delivery of community/warm hubs.

To deliver these grants we have developed a grant scheme design, accompanying this paper, describing the following aspects of the scheme:

• What type of applications are we looking for
• How much money can your organisation ask for
• Time frames
• Monitoring, Reporting & Evaluation
• Governance
• Who cannot apply for the funding and what will not be funded
• Help and advice on running safe events
• Checklist of Eligibility
• Application and assessment process, and
• Template application form

The next stage will be to launch the grant at the beginning of September including launch events in person and on TEAMs and establishment of a micro-site on the district council’s website.

The Leader is happy to support this.

Alternative options considered

Significant discussion took place both before and during the Cabinet meeting on the 6 July and the necessity of a swift response to ensure that Warm/Community Hubs have access to funding before the onset of winter was considered to justify a grant scheme delivered by the team, rather than a third party, as this is likely to be more quickly deployed.