Applying to the Million Hours Fund
Million Hours Fund application guidance.
Applies to England
The Million Hours Fund Phase 1 and 2 are closed for applications. Phase 3 of the Fund is open – for more information and to apply, please visit Million Hours - The National Lottery Community Fund.
Applications open: 30 July 2023
Applications close: 12 noon on 22 October 2025.
Please note, if The National Lottery Community Fund receives more applications than they expect, they may have to close the application deadline early. You should apply as soon as you are ready, instead of waiting until the deadline.
Details
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and The National Lottery Community Fund are launching Phase 3 of the Million Hours Fund, a £19 million joint investment (£12 million from DCMS, £7 million from The National Lottery Community Fund). The Fund will run until 31 March 2027.
The Million Hours Fund provides youth organisations with funding to deliver positive activities for young people in areas with higher rates of anti-social behaviour.
Phase 3 of the Million Hours Fund is the third round of funding for the programme, following Phases 1 and 2 which took place from summer 2023, and will run until March 2026, with an investment of £22 million (£11 million from DCMS, £11 million from The National Lottery Community Fund).
Eligible areas
This funding is for organisations to provide extra support to young people in areas with higher rates of anti-social behaviour, funding extra hours of youth work to give these young people more places to go and positive things to do.
This funding is for certain parts of England only. The additional hours of youth work must take place in, or benefit young people living in, one of the eligible wards. Eligible wards have been determined by allocating wards to each Police Force Area (PFA) based on the size of the local youth population, and then selecting those with the highest reported number of anti-social behaviour incidents from within the PFA.
The eligible wards have been updated for 2025. You will need to check if your ward is eligible even if you have received funding from the Million Hours Fund before, as some wards have changed due to using updated police anti-social behaviour data and changes to ward names and boundaries.
This postcode checker allows you to check which postcodes correspond to which wards, so you can see if you are providing youth services in an eligible area.
List of eligible wards for the Million Hours Fund
For full details of the eligibility criteria for the Million Hours Fund, please visit The National Lottery Community Fund website. Please make sure you have read and understood the eligibility criteria before applying.
How to apply
You can apply for the fund on the National Lottery Community Fund’s website.
To apply, you will need to create an account with TNLCF if you haven’t already.
If you have any questions about applying for this funding, contact The National Lottery Community Fund.
The privacy notice explains what personal data will be collected by The National Lottery Community Fund and how and why it will use this data as part of the Million Hours Fund.
Updates to this page
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Page updated for phase 3 of the fund.
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Updated ward list spreadsheet.
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Updated page with notice to highlight Phase 1 has now closed.
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Page updated to reflect closing date being brought forward to 12 noon on 4 August 2023.
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Page updated to reflect clarifications on timings.
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First published.