Guidance

UK Youth Parliament Programme 2023-2025: Guidance for applicants

Published 7 November 2022

Introduction

DCMS is relaunching the UK Youth Parliament programme to increase engagement with young people from across the UK, including with more marginalised young people and those that may not normally take part in a youth voice programme. The programme aims to build the UK Youth Parliament into an established part of the policymaking and parliamentary process, with direct access to decision makers, and improve feedback and recognition to young people. It will also bring together the successful elements of DCMS’ previous Youth Engagement Grant, under the banner of the UK Youth Parliament. The programme is delivered as a partnership between central government, UK Parliament and the youth sector.

The key objectives of this grant are to:

• engage young people in a UK-wide democratic process
• enable young people to express their voices on issues that matter to them
• engage young people at an early stage in the development of policy affecting them
• test specific government proposals and policy with young people.

DCMS is committed to funding this important opportunity for young people across the UK to participate in the democratic process and share their views to shape national, regional and local decision-making.

DCMS is competing the grant, in line with best practice in grant-making across government.

A grant of up to £750,000 is available for the delivery of the UK Youth Parliament for two years from April 2023 to March 2025.

• Up to £650,000 of this grant is expected to fund the core costs of the programme; and
• Up to £100,000 (£50,000 per annum) to ensure young people from the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can participate in the programme, including in elections, induction, training and associated activities.

Grant funding is available from UK Parliament to support this project as follows:

• £10,000 per annum is available to support a yearly Youth Select Committee, to be delivered in collaboration with UK Parliament

This funding will be agreed with UK Parliament once the delivery provider is known. The delivery provider will need to complete additional due diligence to receive the UK Parliament grant funding, and this funding is subject to UK Parliament confirming satisfactory due diligence has been completed.

Grant funding is also available from the House of Commons to support this project as follows:

• £32,000 per annum is available to support a yearly House of Commons Sitting, to be delivered in collaboration with the House of Commons.

This funding will be agreed with the House of Commons once the delivery provider is known. The delivery provider will need to complete additional due diligence to receive the House of Commons grant funding, and this funding is subject to the House of Commons confirming satisfactory due diligence has been completed.

DCMS is also committing up to £80,000 for each financial year to focus on evaluation and analysis of the programme. This will focus on understanding the impact of the programme on participants, Ministers and officials that engage with the UKYP, and policy and decision making. The impact evaluation work will be conducted by an external provider and will be overseen and managed by DCMS. DCMS intends to contract for the research and impact study in 2023.

This guide introduces the UK Youth Parliament and provides details of how to apply.

This grant competition is inviting charitable, benevolent and philanthropic organisations in England to apply for funding. The criteria are:

1. Applications should be for up to £750,000.

2. The value of the grant requested must not represent more than 50% of the applicant organisation’s, or consortia’s collective annual income for the financial year.

3. Applicants should be able to demonstrate that they can carry out activity across all four nations of the United Kingdom.

4. Applications should be able to demonstrate the organisation’s ability to adapt delivery based on external circumstances, including COVID-19 restrictions.

5. Applicants must be able to draw down and complete all funded activity by 31 March 2025.

6. Applicants should demonstrate that they will be able to secure external investment and partnerships to add value to this grant.

7. Applications must include details of arrangements for safeguarding children and vulnerable adults as part of their planned activities.

Notes:

• This fund is open to charitable, benevolent and philanthropic organisations in England.
• All funds must be spent by 31st March 2025.
• The value of the grant requested must not represent more than 50% of the applicant organisation’s, or consortia’s collective annual income for the financial year.
• This is expected to fund activity across the UK, but principally in England.
• Applications must include details of arrangements for safeguarding children and vulnerable adults as part of their planned activities.

Successful applicants will be informed in January 2023. We expect the grant agreement will be finalised with the successful applicant in January/February. Exact timing may vary. Programme delivery will take place from April 2023 to March 2025 with all spending to be completed within this time period.

We will be running two webinars on Tuesday 15th November from 10am to 11am and Thursday 17 November from 2pm to 3pm to explain the grant and answer any questions. If you would like to attend one of the webinars, please contact Rachel Cole at rachel.cole@dcms.gov.uk to sign up.

Application details:

• Applications open on 7 November 2022 at 10am
• The deadline for applications is 23:59 18 December 2022 (6-week window)
• All applicants should answer all questions on the application form
• All applications received by the closing date will be assessed following the closing date
• Any applications received after the closing date will not be assessed
• All available information and guidance relating to this funding is contained within the grant advert, application form, guidance for applicants and DCMS terms and conditions
• As the application process is competitive, we are not able to answer individual questions or respond to requests for support in completing the application

Background

DCMS expects the key objectives of the grant to be achieved through a range of grant-funded activities, including, but not limited to:

• election of young people to be Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) and Deputy Members aged 11 to 18 from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, mirroring representation in the UK Parliament, and ensuring participation from the Devolved Administrations
• selection of a Youth Steering Group to oversee and advise on the UKYP to include previous MYPs and other young people on an application basis
• induction, training and support for young elected members
• participation in at least one event a year to bring together all young elected members (for example, an Annual Conference)
• yearly House of Commons Sitting (to be delivered in collaboration with UK Parliament)
• yearly Youth Select Committee (to be delivered in collaboration with UK Parliament)
• increased Ministerial roundtables/workshops averaging 6 events a year
• regional events to engage young people in the democratic processes to take place throughout the year.
• yearly ballot of UK-wide youth views
• increased engagement sessions in and outside education on UKYP and democratic processes to take place throughout the year
• MYP Manifesto and policy development, including deep dives into policy priority areas
• campaign activity and promotion throughout the year locally, regionally and nationally
• accredited training, e.g. leadership training for all beneficiaries.
• establishing a pool/network of young people from existing youth voice groups to work in collaboration with the UKYP
• a range of engagement options to increase outreach including surveys and polling
• increased outreach work to engage with more marginalised young people and those that may not normally take part in the UKYP, including creating accessible content
• greater focus on facilitating join up between APPGs/Select Committees and the UKYP.
• greater focus on digital communications/digital engagement platform to effectively engage with large numbers of young people
• local/regional/national ongoing support for participating organisations and support, advertising and promotion for new areas to sign up
• evaluation report on the programme and key findings

These activities will be essential to delivering the programme’s strategic outcomes, as outlined below:

• encouraging young people to participate in the democratic process
• young people taking active leadership and decision-making roles in shaping the programme locally, regionally and nationally
• reaching 10% of young people (11 to 18 years old) through the UKYP and ballot
• reaching a diverse group of young people
• participating young people develop skills for life and work
• greater digital engagement with the UKYP and ballot
• young people being encouraged to participate in the democratic process and social action.

Criteria for funding

All applications will be assessed against the following criteria:

Ability to deliver: Applications must demonstrate the organisation’s capability, capacity and creativity to deliver the project, including through evidence of sufficient expertise and experience in working with young people and amplifying youth voice, as well as through outlining a clear project plan and the scale and reach of project outputs. Applications will be assessed on the suitability of timescales and clarity of quarterly activities. Applications will also be assessed on how easy it is to understand what you are proposing and how well this meets the strategic outcomes and key outputs outlined.

Adaptability for delivery: Applications must demonstrate the organisation’s ability to adapt delivery based on external circumstances, including Covid-19 restrictions.

Diverse group: Applications must demonstrate the organisation’s ability to reach young people with a range of lived experiences and from a range of diverse backgrounds, including through digital engagement

Digital engagement: Applicants must demonstrate the organisation’s ability to support digital engagement, including a strong focus on online communications, branding and marketing.

Value for money: Applications must demonstrate how the greatest value for money will be delivered, including providing plans for how activities will achieve social impact. Applications will be assessed on the suitability of financial management mechanisms.

Ability to secure external funding: Applications must demonstrate the organisation’s ability to bring in external funding sources and partners, to add value to the programme.

Partnerships: Applications must demonstrate the organisation’s ability to build links with local authorities, schools and other partners.

Monitoring and Evaluation: Applications must provide plans for robust evaluation of the project, including the level and number of outputs and outcomes to be measured.

We are looking for new and creative proposals to deliver the programme activities. We are particularly interested in proposals increasing digital engagement, branding, marketing and communications and increasing engagement with more marginalised young people and those that may not normally take part in a youth voice programme. We encourage consortium bids or partnership working to be able to deliver all aspects of the programme.

Guidance for applicants

Who is managing this grant funding?

The Civil Society & Youth directorate, which is part of the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will run and manage this grant funding.

Who can apply for this grant funding?

This grant funding is open to individual, and consortia of charitable, benevolent and philanthropic organisations in England, that propose clear projects that fit the criteria for funding.

How much funding will be awarded?

We will consider applications for £750,000. We can not fund capital projects or items of capital expenditure which exceed the lead organisation’s capital de minimis.

The amount of funding a grant recipient, or consortium, receives per financial year should not exceed 50% of that financial year’s annual collective turnover/income. We will consider exceptions if the income of the grant recipient, or consortium, is below this amount and the application is particularly strong.

All funding must be drawn down and delivered by 31st March 2025. Applicants will be informed whether or not they have been successful in January 2023. Although exact timing may vary, we expect the grant agreement will be finalised with the successful applicant in January and February 2023. Programme delivery will take place from April 2023 - March 2025 with all spending to be completed within this time period. Projects may start at risk from the date they are directly informed by DCMS that the application has been successful.

Expenditure incurred prior to this date cannot be claimed.

Geographical reach of proposed projects

The UK Youth Parliament Programme will involve young people from all four nations of the UK. The DCMS grant is intended primarily for funding activity in England. However, the grant may be used to fund necessary activity in the devolved nations to ensure young people from the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can participate fully in the programme, including in elections, induction, training and associated activities.

The project must build connections with partners in the devolved nations, and may make use of pre-existing elections where appropriate. Scotland and Wales already have in place their own youth elections, which can provide MYPs from those nations. The successful applicant may need to work in Northern Ireland to ensure that there are suitable youth elections which can provide the mandate for the young people to participate in the UK Youth Parliament.

The three devolved nations already have training in place to support young people to engage in youth representation activity; but the successful applicant might need to use part of the DCMS grant (or other external funding) to ensure that MYPs in all four nations are adequately trained and supported to participate in the UKYP events.

The youth ballot should be UK-wide; the successful applicant will need to work with partners in the devolved nations to promote the ballot and to enable full UK-wide participation.

Equal opportunities and diversity

All applicants will be expected to show how their project activities are inclusive and operate within an equal opportunities and diversity framework.

Safeguarding

DCMS is committed to protecting people from harm. All applicants must include a copy of their safeguarding policy, along with a statement that confirms the applicant has effective and appropriate safeguarding procedures that protect employees, beneficiaries and/or volunteers from harm, and that explains how any concerns and incidents are managed.

Payment model

All applicants will be expected to clearly set out a proposal for how much funding will be drawn down in each financial quarter. You will need to support this with a detailed budget breakdown. Your drawdown requests and budget must fit the DCMS financial year.

Please note: The DCMS financial year runs 1st April to 31 March.

Payments will be made quarterly and in arrears. You will need to provide a breakdown of actual, eligible expenditure in order to make a claim. We will only pay out the amount you can evidence as spent.

Variations between proposed drawdown amounts and actual drawdown requests across quarters of the same financial year will be accepted, with explanation and justification.

However, we will not be able to vary funds across financial years. Any funds not drawn down by the end of the financial year will become unavailable.

DCMS makes payments in arrears and only pays in advance by exception. If you wish to be paid in advance, you will be asked to explain and justify your reasons in your application, this includes ensuring that your request fits with one or more of the ‘payment in advance’ criteria outlined in the application form. Your request will be considered as part of the assessment process. If your application and request to be paid in advance are approved, you will be expected to provide quarterly reconciliation details for the duration of your project detailing any underspend against funds received. You will be required to reconcile any underspend before further funding is released. You will also be required to complete a formal Financial Reconciliation Statement (FRS) form at the end of the financial year.

Whether paid in arrears or in advance, you must be able to transparently report on a quarterly basis and evidence of expenditure on the use of funding to deliver the UK Youth Parliament Programme must be shown as restricted funds in your accounts and you must be able to identify separately the value and purpose of the grant in your audited accounts. You will be asked to describe the financial management systems and processes you will put in place to ensure you can achieve this in your application.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning

We are committed to ensuring that funded work is appropriately monitored and evaluated and that lessons learnt and examples of good practice are made widely available. Evaluation and sharing of good practice should be built into every application.

Applicants will be expected to list anticipated outputs and to explain the data collection and monitoring systems that will be put in place to enable these to be evidenced and for the work to be properly evaluated, proportionate to the value and length of the project. The outputs we would expect to see include, but are not limited to:

• Number of young people in the programme.
• Duration of opportunities (the amount of time each young people stays with the UKYP)
• Intensity of opportunities (how often the young people engage with the programme
• Demographics of Young People supported:
  • Gender
  • Ethnicity
  • Socioeconomic status (including parent/household income, free school meals)
  • Age
  • Disability
  • Sexual Identity
• Location of places, postcodes and ideally postcodes of young people attending
• Activities undertaken by UKYP groups.

Applicants will be required to work and cooperate with the external research provider who will be delivering the impact evaluation for the programme. Applicants must also demonstrate how lessons learnt from the funded work will be disseminated through relevant networks.

DCMS is committing up to £80,000 in each financial year to focus on evaluation and analysis of the UKYP. This will focus on understanding the impact of the programme on participants, Ministers and officials that engage with the UKYP, and policy and decision making. This will include a process and impact evaluation, monitoring the delivery and reach. The impact evaluation work will be conducted by an external provider and will be overseen and managed by DCMS. DCMS intends to contract for the research and impact study in 2023.

The successful delivery provider for the UKYP will be expected to work closely with the research provider to deliver this research.

Exclusions

We will not fund:

• academic research - we will not fund academic or desk-based research projects. However, applications for action research, including pilot projects to test new ideas, are welcomed (please note: funding for any follow-on work is not guaranteed)
• appeals
• arts - unless projects demonstrate significant benefit in terms of social inclusion
• campaigning and awareness raising activity that is party political
• capital projects - we can not fund capital projects or items of capital expenditure which exceed the lead organisation’s capital de minimis;
• core costs - other than for those that can be evidenced as directly related to the project outlined in the application
• debts or loans
• fees for professional fundraisers
• individuals
• organisations that are mainly fundraising bodies
• party political organisations
• projects outside our funding priorities
• promotion of religious beliefs
• rapid response to emergency situations
• retrospective funding
• schools, colleges and hospitals
• services run by statutory or public authorities - we will not support work that is a statutory duty. However, we welcome applications for projects working in partnership with statutory organisations and those involving both the voluntary and public sectors, provided they are led by a voluntary organisation
• vehicles
• advocacy and lobbying:
  • successful applicants can use funding for the UK Youth Parliament Programme to promote their project to potential beneficiaries, and to organisations and individuals which may refer beneficiaries to the project (i.e. successful applicants may raise awareness of the project and the services provided by that project)

Completing your application form

General tips

There are a number of guidance notes included in the application form, please read these carefully and respond to all relevant points;

Write clearly and concisely avoiding the use of jargon or abbreviations; remember that the assessor reading your application may not have a background in your field of expertise; and

Do not exceed stated word limits.

Organisation details

This section requires you to input details relating to the lead organisation; we welcome applications from consortia, but require one organisation to take the lead role as the applicant, main point of contact, payee for funds, and responsible body who agrees to ensure the terms and conditions of the grant offer are upheld by all involved;

Please ensure that the contact details given are for the day-to-day contact for all enquiries relating to the project application.

Project overview

This section asks you to provide an overview of the UK Youth Parliament Programme funded project. You are required to:

• [If a consortium application] list all consortium partners involved in the project – you should complete this section if you are the lead organisation in a formal consortium. It is expected that partnership agreements are already in place, or that you have correspondence from authorised representatives at each partner organisation, that confirms involvement in the project and acknowledges submission of your application
• list all the delivery partners involved in the project - please complete this section if you are applying as a single organisation but intend to work with other organisations to deliver the project
• describe what the project will actually do
• list the expected outputs that will be directly attributable to the grant
• if applicable, explain how and where the UK Youth Parliament Programme project fits into any wider projects or programmes being run by your organisation or consortium

Project delivery

This section asks you to provide details about:

• when (in terms of start, finish and key milestone dates) the project will be delivered
• where the project will be delivered (in terms of region, locality)
• who the intended beneficiaries are
• who will deliver the project (i.e. what staff do you have in place or need to recruit to deliver project activities)
• how the project will be delivered – this includes demonstrating that you have the capacity and capability to deliver the proposed project

In particular this section asks you to detail specific project activities by quarter. It is important that you offer as much detail (in bullet point format is acceptable) to help us

understand what will be achieved during each time period. If your application is successful, this part of your application will be used to inform your project progress and monitoring report.

We also ask you to set out details of your safeguarding arrangements.

Project finances

This section asks you to set out the total cost of your project including funding outside of the DCMS grant.

Please note that we can not fund capital projects or items of capital expenditure which exceeds the lead organisation’s capital de minimis.

You are required to submit a detailed budget breakdown which clearly shows expenditure by month and financial year, noting that our financial year runs 1 April to 31 March.

You are required to set out your proposed drawdown schedule.

You will also need to set out your financial management and control mechanisms explaining how you will ensure that the UK Youth Parliament Programme can be accounted for, on a quarterly basis, accurately and transparently.

How we decide

Applications will be assessed on their individual merits according to the criteria for funding outlined above.

Your organisation will also need to pass our due diligence checks which ensure:

• the grant award does not exceed 50% of your annual income or collective annual income if you are applying as a formal consortium
• we have received and reviewed at least 2 references
• you are registered with the Charity Commission and / or Companies House website and have filed all required returns;
• if you have been funded by another part of government, we seek feedback from that department
• you are not already receiving funding for this project from Government, meaning your project is funded twice
• trustees are not related and there is no indication of fraud
• where multiple organisations are located at the same postcode, there is no indication of fraud - if you do have the same postcode as other organisations you will be asked to provide an explanation

Please note: in the event your last financial year end was more than 6 months ago we may request further accounting information at a later date as part of the due diligence process.

You will not be contacted for clarification or further information. It is your responsibility to ensure your application is concise, fully completed and that you supply all necessary supporting documentation.

The only instance where a government official may contact you is where the level of funding you have requested cannot be met and a lesser amount is being offered. In this case, you

will be invited to consider a lesser amount and submit a summary of activities, outputs, outcomes and budget (realigned to fit the revised funding on offer) for consideration. If contacted under these circumstances, please note that the time frame for providing your initial response may be very short.

When making decision

We will give equal consideration to all applications that meet our criteria;

We will be open and accountable in our procedures;

All staff will be required to declare conflicts of interest. If there is a conflict of interest, they will not be involved in the assessment process or the decision to award a grant.

If you are offered the grant

Our standard terms and conditions apply to every grant we award.

Your grant offer letter will set out any additional conditions that apply specifically to your grant. The letter will also set out what the grant is for and the payment schedule. Once we have awarded a grant, we will ask you for regular financial and performance monitoring reports and a final project report at the end of the funding term.

Please note:

• grant money will not be paid until we have received your written acceptance of the terms and conditions attached to your grant offer
• if applying as a formal consortium, all partner organisations will also be required to provide written acceptance of the terms and conditions, it will be the lead applicant’s responsibility to seek this acceptance
• you must acknowledge you have received our grant in your annual report and accounts covering the period of the project
• if there is any breach of the terms and conditions, or your organisation ceases to operate before the grant has been spent, grant monies may have to be repaid
• when the grant ends, DCMS does not have a commitment to provide any further funding for the project
• anyone found to be acting dishonestly in making an application for funding or spending the grant will be reported to the police and may be liable for prosecution