The Million Hours Fund

The Million Hours Fund is provided by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF).

Reopening after a two-year gap, this third round is offering grants of between £30,000 and £100,000 to provide extra support to young people in areas with higher rates of anti-social behaviour in England.

The funding will provide extra hours of youth work to give these young people more places to go and positive things to do. The extra hours could be used for things like learning, arts, and playing sports, or for activities like mentoring, and developing social or life skills.

To be eligible, projects must:

• benefit young people aged 10 to 18, or up to 25 if they have special educational needs or disabilities (SEND)
• effectively engage with young people at risk of taking part in anti-social behaviour
• deliver more hours of youth work than you provide now
• involve young people in deciding how you work
• deliver youth work that is open to as wide a range of young people as possible (known as ‘open access’)
• be run by trusted adults such as qualified youth workers, youth support workers, or experienced volunteers

The extra youthwork being delivered must help young people:

• have improved emotional wellbeing
• have improved life and practical skills
• feel safer and have access to trusted relationships with adults

Organisations can only apply if their work either is in an eligible ward area or will benefit young people living in one or more eligible ward areas. The eligible wards for this round are based on the youth population and levels of antisocial behaviour recorded by the police. The eligible wardchecker is on the NLCF website and includes several wards within Wakefield district.

Most of the funding being requested should be for the direct costs of running extra hours of youth work and can be used for:

• Staff salaries to deliver this work
• Volunteer costs to deliver this work
• Training costs
• Other direct costs to deliver youth work, like materials, equipment and food
• The cost of reporting back to NLCF about the funding.

The funding can also include overheads, such as part of the rent, insurance, part of a salary for someone not directly involved in this work, such as a senior manager or an office admin worker.

Groups are encouraged to apply as soon as they are ready and not wait for the deadline as the programme may close before the deadline if more applications are received than expected.

The deadline for applications is 22 October 2025 (12 noon).