ECB County Grant Fund 2025 - Opening 1st February 2025!

It gives Wiltshire Cricket great pleasure to inform clubs of the launch of the 2025 ECB County Grants Fund, which opens from 1st February 2025.

ECB COUNTY GRANT FUND GUIDANCE NOTES 2025

What is the ECB County Grants Fund?

 

The County Grants Fund aims to support ECB affiliated Cricket Clubs across three themes:

  • Creating Welcoming Environments – open to ECB affiliated Cricket Clubs registered for All Stars or Dynamos in 2025, and/or actively involved with competitive female cricket (defined as at least one female team with a minimum of three competitive female fixtures in the 2025 season) and/or Disability Cricket (defined as being a registered Disability Champion Cricket Club in 2025 or a registered host for the Disability Premier League). It is an expectation that any junior programme will include and actively engage with girls.
  • Providing Enhanced Facilities and Playing Opportunities for Women’s and Girls’ Cricket and / or Disability Cricket – open to ECB affiliated Cricket Clubs actively engaged in competitive female only cricket and/or disability cricket (definitions as above).
  • Tackling Climate Change – open to any ECB affiliated Cricket Clubs.

Please note that some of the definitions of clubs that will qualify within the themes above has been tightened for 2025, particularly around what constitutes being actively involved with competitive female cricket.

History of County Grant Fund in Wiltshire

Since the launch of the ECB County Grant Fund in 2022, affiliated clubs in Wiltshire have received a total of £211,000 of investment, split across 33 different individual projects. These have all been within the themes detailed above but have included a range of projects including; Pavilion Social Spaces, Digital Point of Sale Equipment, Outdoor Net Facilities, Improved Toilet Facilities, Outdoor Social Spaces, Wifi improvements, Improved water efficiency, Improved Women’s changing facilities, Electric mowers

How will the County Grant Fund work in Wiltshire in 2025

  • Our Budget: It is important to note that Wiltshire Cricket receives a finite budget from ECB to support clubs through the ECB County Grant Fund. For 2025, our budget is £58,000
    • With a finite budget, we may not be able to support all clubs to the extent that every club wishes. Therefore, to ensure that we can fairly consider the merits of all projects we will be asking clubs to submit expressions of interest within a fixed time window (see below). This will then enable us to assess all projects fairly and in doing so ensure that all investment decisions are made using consistent principles and in the knowledge of how the demand compares with the budget we have available.
  • Expression Of Interest: If you would like to express interest in a project being considered for this round of County Grant funding, you will need to first complete an EOI from 1st February onwards. The person identified as the key contact within your Cricket Club will be required to complete this brief Expression of Interest (EOI) form containing basic information about the proposed project. This will then be submitted to Wiltshire Cricket for initial review.
    • For details on how to get to the point of being able to access the EOI form, please read points 9.1 to 9.4 in the attached guidance notes (top of page 8)
  • Timeframes: Once the fund opens on 1st February, our timescales will be as follows:

Clubs to have submitted EOIs

By Friday 28th February 2025

Wiltshire Cricket decision on outcome of Club EOI (including level of investment)

By Friday 7th March 2025 (after this point, clubs with EOIs that have been successfully approved by Wiltshire Cricket will be able to submit a full application)

Getting ready to submit a County Grant Fund EOI

Ahead of submitting a County Grant Fund EOI, I would urge your club to consider:

  • Do you qualify – please check you deliver the programmes relevant to apply in to project themes 1 and 2
  • Documentation – Page 3 of the Guidance notes outlines the documentation you will need to have in place if you got to the point of submitting a full application
  • Project Themes – As detailed above, there are three project themes. On pages 4 and 5 you will find an extensive list of the types of projects that qualify under each project theme
  • Amount of Grant - Clubs can typically apply for between £1,000 (minimum) and £10,000 (maximum) per application
    • Please note a County Grant Fund cannot be used to fund a project retrospectively
    • Please note that whilst you may express an interest in a certain level of funding, Wiltshire Cricket has a finite budget that has been allocated by ECB and so may need to adjust the amount it can support certain projects

We now invite clubs to proceed with completing their Expressions of Interest, from between 1st February and 28th February 2025.

Any queries please don’t hesitate to contact Pete Sykes: