Essex Cycle Grant

The Essex Cycle grant aims to fund long term sustainable projects that require none or very little funding from the Essex Cycle Grant after a period of 1-5 years (dependent on the scale of the project), to enable them to be self-sufficient in the long-term.

The Essex Cycle grant can fund 100% of project costs in the first year (within maximum grant fund budget set). We may offer continuation grants in future years if your project is successful and requires additional funding to continue. This will be at reduction of 25% of your total project costs each year.

There is no limit on how much you can apply for, although we expect the average award to be £3,000 so the grant can reach as many organisations and people as possible. The grant is for organisations who are willing and able to take immediate action to reach people who can benefit from cycling, particularly those who have become less physically active since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Applications that are focused on the key funding priorities below are more likely to receive an award.

We will prioritise applications that target people who have become physically deconditioned because of the pandemic. We also want to work on more targeted projects to help diversifying the target audience who typically engage in cycling.

We will prioritise applications that engage:

• older people
• disabled people
• people with long-term health conditions
• ethnically diverse communities
• those with poor mental health
• Low Socio-Economic Groups
• women

Major mass participation sporting events like RideLondon inspire people to get active, bring people together and ignite communities. RideLondon is coming to the county for the first time this May in a three-day cycling event that includes elite cyclists and also members of the public in a mass participation event. Although the mass participation cycling event starts and finishes in London, 50-60 miles of this event will be on Essex roads as the ‘Host County’ for the event.  The women’s elite race will also be solely on Essex roads. It is therefore an opportunity not to be missed for Essex to use this event to inspire and support people in Essex to take up cycling as part of a healthy, active, and environmentally sustainable lifestyle. The Essex cycle grant hopes to use the Ride London event to:

• Raise profile of walking and cycling
• help ECC raise awareness and generate excitement around the event in local, hard to reach communities. Help share messages to the more unlikely audiences
• help build community cohesion on the back of events
• Encourage local organisations and clubs to support the activation of RideLondon-Essex. We hope to enable local organisations to use RideLondon to try and attract new individuals and communities to get involved in the lead up to the event weekend (end of May).

Essex is one of the largest counties in England – both in terms of area and population – with a diverse make-up from the rural north of the county to the urban developments of the Thames Gateway. To treat Essex as a homogeneous whole is to ignore the significant variation in wealth, health and environment between our different communities. Through the levelling up Essex agenda areas of Basildon, Brentwood, Canvey Island, Chelmsford, Colchester, Rural Braintree, Tendring and Harlow have been highlighted as areas of focus, therefore more priority will be given to projects being delivered in these areas.

We will fund any organisation that can offer appropriate cycling support and activities, especially for residents who may now be less active due to the pandemic.

We can fund anything from instructors, premises, equipment, marketing and promotion.

Funding requires recipient bodies to have a recognised constitution in place.

The funds cannot be used for:

1. Activities promoting religious or political beliefs
2. Individuals
3. Any private businesses or profit-making organisations unless they are a Social Enterprise or Community Interest Company,
4. Sole traders

Applications on behalf of workplace cycling initiatives and school-based projects will be considered. School based projects should be delivered out of curriculum time, however, our children and young person lead, may signpost you to more appropriate funding where necessary.