A brand-new UK-wide digital service for organisations applying for government grants could save up to £270 million through efficiencies and fraud prevention.

Cabinet Office Minister Alex Burghart will launch the Find a Grant service, which has successfully completed a pilot with four departments, today (Wednesday 28 June) at the department’s second headquarters in Glasgow.

The Minister will also meet with Enable, a Glasgow-based charity supporting young people with disabilities into work across Scotland. This charity has not only benefited from UK Government grants but also worked with the Cabinet Office to help create the Find a Grant system.

The first of its kind Find a Grant service offers a free central place on GOV.UK for business, individuals and organisations to find and apply for government grants. Each year government awards over £50 billion in general grant funding. Government grants can be awarded from anything from improving local housing, to funding innovative new research into advanced fuels and digital technologies, or providing better sports facilities and youth centres for communities.

Currently most departments that provide grant funding have their own services, which duplicate each other and can often be hard for external organisations to find and access.

The new centralised service automates and standardises processes, and cuts duplication, allowing the government to save taxpayer money.

The service also makes it mandatory for departments to advertise their grants and enables them to step  up risk due diligence and fraud prevention, through the Spotlight tool. This means that savings and benefits to the taxpayer could be up £270 million in two years, based on initial estimates following the pilot.

Reflecting the government’s priority to boost economic growth across the whole of the UK and levelling up, the UK-wide service increases the accessibility of grant applications and encourages competition for funding from a wider range of applications. The pilot has already seen a 43% increase in funding awarded to beneficiaries in the north of England.

Alex Burghart, Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office said:

This great new service will help organisations find the grants they need at speed - saving everyone time and money.

That will allow us to focus more money and resources on things that matter to people’s lives, families and communities.

This will increase accessibility and fairness, making sure that different regions of the UK get their fair share.

Results from the pilot service have been impressive, showing the following improvements in quality and efficiency:

-72% reduction in time spent by officials on grant management, resulting in huge cost savings for the taxpayer.

-Grant practitioners are twice as likely to use the Spotlight tool, preventing irregular payments and catching fraudulent applications upfront, therefore protecting the public purse.

-34% reduction in the amount of time users spent on grant applications.

-17% increase in customer satisfaction for making accessing grants faster, simpler and fairer.

Piloted in partnership with the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Business and Trade, and Ministry of Justice, the service is already boasting impressive results.

So far over 200 schemes - worth over £5.3bn - have already been advertised on the new service, which 93,000 people have accessed. The Cabinet Office will soon ensure that all eligible grants are advertised in one place, as well as working with the devolved administrations and local authorities to offer them the opportunity to advertise on Find a Grant.

Theresa Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Enable, said:

Recent research has found that identifying and applying for grant funding is a significant and costly challenge for too many charities and social enterprises, diverting essential time and resources away from delivering for our beneficiaries.

The Find a Grant service cuts through so much of that. This tool will make applying for grant funding a much faster and more efficient process for the team at Enable and charities across the country, boosting our sector’s productivity so we can make a greater impact supporting and delivering services in our communities.