National Portfolio Creative People and Places Extension year funding 2025-26

The central aims of the fund are as follows: 

1. Engage more people from the identified places in a wide range of creative and cultural experiences as audiences and/or participants.  

2. Empower communities to lead and shape local cultural provision. 

3. Ensure both the engagement process and the creative and cultural experiences on offer are relevant and excellent. 

4. Encourage partnerships between publicly funded, amateur, voluntary, community and commercial sectors, as well as collaboration across various cultural institutions. 

5. Take an Action Research approach to community engagement in arts, creativity and culture; learn what works best and share that learning. 

For now, it’s important to read through the guidance. You can find this below along with an Easy Read, Large print, audio and BSL versions. 

On 2 April 2024 you’ll receive an individual “Invitation to Apply” from Arts Council England. This will state your individual project number and provide details of how to find the application task on Grantium. 

You’ll be asked to supply the mandatory attachments as described in Section Three: How to Apply (to be uploaded on the ‘Attachments’ screen) to the application before submitting. The total file size for all attachments should not exceed 10 megabytes. 

After Submitting Your Application: 

• You will receive an acknowledgement email upon submission 

• Eligibility checks will be conducted within 10 working days of the application deadline 

• If your application is ineligible, we will inform you. 

The deadline is midday on 30 May 2024 

Q: Can we carry money over from our previous grant (22-25)? 

We are asking that all programmes continue to deliver the planned activity in their activity plan and agreed budget and cashflow, until March 2025.  

We will continue to release payments according to demonstrated need. We judge this based on the CPP demonstrating that they will be spending their funding, according to their budget, via their quarterly cashflow.  

In January 2025, should programmes have severe delays in claiming past quarterly payments or if they are showing large unspent cash balances in their forward facing cashflow, we may make a decision not to release past payments that have not been claimed.   

We will not be re-profiling payments from this current funding agreement and moving unspent money into the extension year.  We are also asking programmes not to move activity that has been planned to be delivered prior to March 25, to the extension year.   

If you feel you will have significant delays in spending your current grant before March 2025, please have a conversation with your Relationship Manager.  

Q: Do we have to do audited accounts for the whole of our programme only at the end of March 26? Can we do it in smaller chunks if we have several grants to cover? 

We will be requesting that you submit only one set of Audited Accounts covering all of your open CPP funding agreements, including your extension funding agreement, when we close your extension grant in May 2026.  

You will need to ensure that each of your funding agreements is noted as a separate income stream in those accounts, for example, labelled as ‘ACE CPP Grant 1’, ‘ACE CPP Grant 2’ and so on, to cover all funding agreements named above.  

Should you prefer to submit a separate set of audited accounts ahead of May 2026, covering the full income and expenditure of any of your previous funding agreements, you can do this.  Please speak to your Relationship Manager to discuss. 

Q: We want to change our lead organisation – can we do this?  

In exceptional circumstances and with prior agreement of Arts Council England, we will allow a new lead organisation to apply for the extension.  Exceptional circumstances include where the current lead organisation is deemed high risk. If you would like to apply under a new lead organisation, please talk to your Relationship Manager.  You will then need to complete a new lead organisation form, available on request. 

Q: We have to submit a refreshed Business Plan, Activity plan for 24/25 and budget for 24/25 as part of our May 2024 payment conditions.  Can we combine this with our application for the extension year? 

We are trying to make this process as flexible and easy for you as possible.  

Your May 2024 payment conditions include the following:  

Updated Business Plan for the investment period including an updated activity plan for the coming financial year, SMART targets and an updated budget. 

If it is easier for you, you can submit a refreshed Business Plan, Activity Plan and updated budget for 2 years (1 April 2024 – 31 March 2026) for both your May 24 payment condition and your application.  You will need to upload these documents twice – once as part of your May 24 payment request and again as your application for the extension (via the Application Task link you will be sent on 1 April 2024).  The document must clearly show your activity plan and budget for the two financial years 24/25 and 25/26.  

Q: How much Match Funding do we need for the extension year? 

The match funding requirement is still 15%. This is 15% of the total budget across the period of your existing open CPP funding agreements.  Your match funding requirement of 15% will be calculated across the entire funded period, covered by your audited accounts, to 31 March 2026.  There may be some CPPs with two funding agreements open due to a previous transition process – in which case you may want to talk to us about this further. 

Q: How will our original ‘Final Payment Conditions’, due in May 2025 work?  

Should you be successful with your application for Creative People and Places Extension Programme 2025 – 2026, you will be issued with another funding agreement covering the period 1 April 2025 – 31 March 2026. 

Your final payment for your current grant will still be released in May 25 and we won’t be re-profiling that amount over any other payments.   

We will be waiving the following final payment conditions, and moving them to your May 2026 final payment: 

• Final Evaluation Report;  
• Statement of Income and Expenditure for the Funded Period, that has been certified by an independent qualified accountant.  

Q: How much will our new final payment, due in May 2026, be?  

Your final payment for the extension year will be 5% of your extension year grant amount and will be payable upon submission of the conditions above, and any other quarterly conditions, in May 2026. 

Q: When will we be expected to submit accounts certified by an independent qualified accountant?  

Your May 2026 Final Payment Condition will include the following: 

• Statement of Income and Expenditure for the Funded Period, that has been certified by an independent qualified accountant. 

This statement can cover all of your existing, open CPP funding agreements.  Please note that you will need to ensure that each of your funding agreements is noted as a separate income stream in those accounts, for example, labelled as ‘ACE CPP Grant 1’, ‘ACE CPP Grant 2’ and so on, to cover all funding agreements named above.  

We hope this will make it easier for you than having to submit separate accounts for each funding agreement.  

Should you prefer to submit a separate set of accounts ahead of May 2026, covering the full income and expenditure of any of your previous funding agreements, you can do this.  Please speak to your Relationship Manager to discuss. 

Q: The guidance says we need to submit ‘Up to date Management accounts and Income and Expenditure statement up to 31 March 2024’.  What are these? 

This is a set of Management Accounts, which shows a clear Income and Expenditure statement for your CPP programme, up to 31 March 2024.  This is a May 2024 payment condition, and you can submit the same document.  

For more information on the extension and FAQs for those organisations interested in applying for CPP 2026-2029, please see this page. 

If your application goes on to be successful, all grant holders must agree to the Terms and Conditions. These are subject to review and there may be changes before now and the date of the funding agreement.