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Call for Applications: Water Restoration Fund (United Kingdom)

Deadline: 07-Jun-2024

Apply for Water Restoration Fund to restore and enhance the water environment in specified geographical areas.

The Water Restoration Fund (WRF) has 2 types of grants, development and delivery awards, to fund projects that restore and improve water and wetland environments such as:

  • rivers and their headwaters
  • canals
  • lakes
  • ponds
  • wetlands – both freshwater and saltwater
  • estuarine waters

A successful project under this Fund must focus on improving and preventing further deterioration of the water environment in the geographical regions where the fines and penalties were issued. This includes supporting:

  • water bodies to return to good ecological status, ecological potential, or chemical status; or prevent further deterioration from the current ecological status, ecological potential, or chemical status
  • water-dependent protected sites to return to or remain at favourable condition
  • The restoration of other water-dependent habitats and species especially where action supports restoration of associated protected sites or water bodies.
Funding Information
  • Development awards
    • Grant value: from £75,000 to £250,000
    • Project length: 6 to 12 months
  • Delivery awards
    • Grant value: from £500,000 to £2 million
    • Project length: 12 to 30 months
  • A grant can cover up to 100% of eligible costs.
  • Funding available in water and sewerage company regions:
    • Water company
      • Anglian Water: £3,085,000
      • South West Water: £2,150,000
      • Thames Water: £3,334,000
      • United Utilities: £800,000
      • Yorkshire Water: £1,600,750
Eligible Funding Activities
  • Your grant can pay for activities that support your project in meeting the Fund’s objectives, including:
    • purchase of materials
    • equipment purchase or hire (where it is critical to the delivery of the project)
    • costs of a contractor or procurement fees for permits, licenses, or consents, where there is no statutory requirement for these to be in place
    • grant monitoring and evaluation activities
    • software, data or mapping costs or the commissioning of specialist technical advice
    • feasibility studies
    • project management employees (staff costs) directly related to the administration and delivery of the project being funded
Ineligible Funding Activities
  • Your grant will not pay for:
    • work or activities which the grant recipient, or any member of their partnership has a statutory duty to undertake, or that are fully funded by other sources
    • business running costs
    • donated work or services
    • projects or activities completely outside of England or outside the boundary of eligible water and sewerage company regions (project activities can fall outside of the eligible regions, however, they will not receive funding towards them: only activities within the eligible region will receive funding)
    • projects not delivering direct interventions related to the improvement of the water or wetland environment
    • projects delivering and involving improvements to water industry assets or land
    • projects focusing on coastal water bodies (estuarine habitats are eligible)
    • projects led by water companies or projects that financially benefit water and sewerage companies
    • any activity that is already being directly supported by an existing public sector funding scheme (such as those set out in the ‘other funding schemes’ section)
    • fines, charges, or penalties of any kind
    • VAT, where this is recoverable
    • any expenditure already carried out before the funding is agreed
    • any project that has already had funding allocated or addressing the same intervention as a project already funded
    • expenses, such as for gifts or entertaining, specifically aimed at influencing government policy
Who can apply?
  • You can apply for the grants if you are:
    • an environmental or another not-for-profit organisation
    • a member of a Protected Landscape (National Park Authority and National Landscape)
    • from a local authority
    • a landowner, land manager or farmer
    • any other authority that is not part of, or an agency of, UK central government (where there is not a statutory obligation in place)
    • a catchment partnership (applications to be submitted by their host organisation)
  • Your project must also be in an area in which sewage collection and treatment is provided by:
    • Thames Water
    • Yorkshire Water
    • Anglian Water
    • United Utilities
    • South West Water
Who can not apply? 
  • You cannot apply if you’re from:
    • water and sewerage companies
    • non-departmental public bodies
    • government departments and executive agencies
    • non ministerial departments (such as the Forestry Commission)
  • You do not need partnership funding to apply for a development award, but applications for delivery awards should seek to secure partnership funding and provide evidence of this as it will improve the scoring when they assess your application.
  • There is no restriction on working in partnership with water and sewerage companies, if this is beneficial to project outcomes. However, the water and sewerage company cannot be the lead applicant, financially benefit from the project, be the recipient of any funding, or use this fund or outcome of the project to perform statutory obligations.

For more information, visit RPA.