Early Years Expansion Grant

The Government has awarded us money to increase the number of early years’ places for children under 3 years-old in areas of Liverpool where there is insufficient provision.

Application window opens: Wednesday 18th December 2024
Deadline for applications: Wednesday 22nd January 2025

Who can apply for this grant?

To apply for an Early Years Expansion Grant, you as a provider, must:

• be a private, voluntary or independent childcare childminder or school operating in Liverpool
• be registered with Ofsted, an independent schools’ inspectorate, or childminder agency
• have an Ofsted rating of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, or prove you can achieve either rating if you are a new setting awaiting inspection

We cannot offer grants to a provider rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted and will only award funds to providers rated ‘requires improvement’ in exceptional circumstances.

What can this grant be spent on?

The minimum grant awarded to successful applicants will be £10,000. This can be spent on:

• building work to improve the use of the space – for instance, to improve or secure access to previously unused areas, or create indoor floor space or add outdoor classrooms to increase the number of childcare places
• building work to deliver additional, inclusive, early years childcare places
• improve storage to enable indoor space to be used more effectively in the delivery of additional childcare places
• new physical assets such as additional tables, chairs, shelving and essential resources – these assets must continue to be in a useable state for more than one financial year

If your childcare setting also has domestic premises, we must be satisfied that the grant will be used to improve the childcare provision.

What must this grant not be spent on?

You cannot apply for this grant to do the following:

• carry out routine maintenance or refurbishment of premises
• pay for revenue expenditure of any kind, such as training or staff costs, or resources and assets such as toys, books or clothing
• improve or enhance areas that has no direct relation to increasing the number of available childcare places

Please read the full conditions of use for the Early Years Expansion Grant.

How to apply for this grant

Please use the form linked below to apply for the grant before Wednesday 22nd January 2025. You will need to know the number of full time equivalent (FTE) places that you will be creating and a brief description of your project. 

You will also need the following documents to hand to upload as evidence to complete your application form:

• insurance certificate
• business plan
• current and previous years accounts 
• cashflow forecasts for three years
• at least one itemised quote for the building work which demonstrates value for money - two further quotes will be requested before grant funds are released, if your application is successful
• an itemised, costed list of essential resources needed

Please ensure you calculate VAT and include this in your costings to ensure that you are requesting the full amount required to complete the works named. If VAT is not calculated, it will be assumed that this has already been included in your costing.

If you are not requesting the full amount for your expansion project, please show in your business plan and cash flow forecasting how the remaining balance will be funded and the financial impact this will have.

Read our privacy notice which tells you how we use your data.

Apply for an Early Years Expansion Grant now

What happens next?

Once we have received your application, we will review it and the evidence you have submitted. If we need to ask you any additional questions, we will email you with them. A member of the Early Years Team may also arrange a visit to your childcare setting to discuss your expansion plans further.

Your application will then be sent to the childcare grant’s panel which will determine if it is successful.

A decision on whether you will be awarded a grant will be made by Friday 7th February 2025.

How much will be awarded?

If your application is successful, the minimum amount awarded will be £10,000.

Some applications may only be partially agreed by the childcare grant panel and only where works or resources deemed as non-essential to the expansion are discounted. If this is the case, you will be sent a list of what has been approved along with the terms and conditions of the grant award.

How are decisions made?

Applications will be discussed by a panel which will rate the application using the criteria below:

• creation of places based on demand and sufficiency within the ward: 30%
• value for money: 30%
• deliverability timescales: 20%
• financial sustainability: 10%
• inclusivity: 5%
• quality of provision: 5%

What happens if an application is unsuccessful?

There is no appeals process, the panel decision is final due to limited funds, resources and a restrictive timescale for processing these grants. 

We can provide feedback on your application, highlighting the areas that received a lower score, if you email childcaregrants@liverpool.gov.uk.

Please note that there may be further rounds of funding allocations based on available funds and changes in sufficiency up until the programme is due to end, however this is not guaranteed.

Further information and help

For help with this grant application, please email childcaregrants@liverpool.gov.uk.