Eligible costs
Community groups can apply for a share of the available £150,000 funding pot, up to £40,000. Unspent funding from Round 4 will be rolled over to the next round.
Applications for large grants should be used for large capital expenses; this may require feasibility work to be completed for your project. See the figure below for an example of expected costs at different stages of a decarbonisation project.

Eligible Costs
The following costs are eligible under HCEF:
- Capital costs: purchasing materials, technologies, and equipment to deliver or monitor the project.
- Core costs: consulting fees, feasibility studies, staff and office costs to support the project but not for general staff/office costs
- Project management costs: including £500 to cover feasibility costs for successful applicants.
- Project and promotional costs: these must be solely related to the project, for example, promotional material to engage residents.
Ineligible Costs
Unfortunately, we are not able to fund:
- Sole individuals – if you are an individual, you could link up with a local organisation to discuss your idea.
- Day to day organisational overheads (including rent, bills, administration or any staff costs unrelated to the project).
- Fully funded positions, we are only able to fund fees for consultancy work or temporary/partial staff costs to deliver your project.
- Educational activities or workshops which do not support the delivery of a capital project. This is due to carbon offset restrictions which require the majority of funding to go towards projects that result in measurable carbon savings.
- Nature-based solutions, such as tree-planting. Whilst we acknowledge the many benefits of absorbing carbon emissions through planting trees, the difficulty in measuring carbon savings as a long-term storage solution means that this cannot be prioritised.
- Domestic energy saving improvements – unless you are a constituted residents/tenants association with permission in principle from your landlord(s). Your project should benefit and engage the community.