Apply for a grant beta assessment report
Source: gov.uk (2025-08-05)

Service Standard report for CO's Apply for a grant beta reassessment

Service Standard reassessment report

Apply for a grant

Previous assessment reports

Apply for a Grant alpha assessment report (https://www.gov.uk/service-standard-reports/apply-for-a-grant-alpha-assessment)

Apply for a Grant beta assessment report (https://www.gov.uk/service-standard-reports/apply-for-a-grant-beta-assessment)

Service description:

Find a Grant provides a single, central service for government-funded grants to be advertised. The service was mandated by Ministers from 1st April 2023 for all general competed and criteria-based schemes. Apply for a Grant is an integrated application form builder with links to Spotlight for due diligence checks. It provides grant administrators the ability to build custom application forms and provides applicants a more streamlined application process.

Service users

This service is for people looking to apply for grants (Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprises (VSCEs), charities, small/large businesses, local authorities, individuals) and for grant administrators looking to create and host applications for general grants:

Applicants
- access funding to deliver outcomes
- search for grants
- apply for grants
Grant administrators
- offer funding, to meet policy objectives
work for a public body:
- decide why a grant is needed
- manage the application process
- make sure grants are searchable
- decide who to award funding to
Things the service team has done well:

the team has shown they have addressed all the points raised in the Beta assessment including building into the service the collection of the time-to-complete metrics making it easier to report on this metric

the team has put appropriate reporting in place for their stakeholders. This includes developing a plan to upgrade their mechanism to enable automated reporting

the team has considered the four mandatory KPIs including developing a robust methodology for calculating the Cost Per Transaction

the team has made extensive use of the available user feedback data

the service team has made significant progress in addressing the recommendations from the Beta assessment. Their successful implementation of GOV.UK OneLogin to replace the COLA service authentication is particularly noteworthy

the team’s proactive approach to addressing user feedback is evident in the creation of “superadmin” and “technical support” roles, as well as the addition of the co-authorship and application preview features, and the integration with Spotlight.

they have also made good use of the Grants Centre of Excellence, adding more structured content and guidance to help people access the service, and they are taking positive steps to improve the skills of the grants community by providing user guides in various formats.

3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels

Decision

The service was rated amber for point 3 of the Standard.

During the assessment, we didn’t see evidence of:
- the previous assessment recommended that the team address the risk posed by their lack of control over departmental grant teams’ support channels and processes. The panel would like to see evidence for how the service supports users who struggle to use it (assisted digital support). The team explained that this is signposted as part of the journey and delegated to departmental grant teams. The panel would appreciate it if the service team could share any user insights and learnings since the last assessment took place, to show how well this support model is meeting user needs.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:

keep doing UCD iterations in line with service releases. The panel was presented withresearch from 2023. None from 2024. Though clearly user feedback is coming fromother routes

in addition to the assisted digital user research already done, the panel recommend doing more to proportionally represent the service’s user base

continue close collaboration with the Grants Centre of Excellence to ensure user guidance is designed for the needs of your users and accessible to all. The team’s plan to convert PDF guides to HTML format is a positive step and should be prioritised

collecting structured feedback on the Grant guidance content would be beneficial as the service grows, to allow the service team to see if the outcome of their efforts to educate the grant administrators is meeting the applicants’ needs

10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data

Decision

The service was rated amber for point 10 of the Standard.

During the assessment, we didn’t see evidence of:

a Performance Framework to help determine success measures. Performance frameworks are excellent tools that can be used to map the team’s goals and benefits to KPI’s and success measures. The team should produce a robust performance framework to move from Amber to Green

the team needs to ensure that there is a consistent robust pathway from data insights to developing improvement to the service

Next Steps

This service can now move more fully into public beta, subject to addressing the amber points within three months time and CO Digital spend approval.

This service now has permission to launch on a GOV.UK service domain with a beta banner.