Lloyds Bank Foundation: Good Place to Live – New Beginnings Fund

Unrestricted grants of up to £200,000 over four years, plus tailored organisational development support, for charities and CICs preventing homelessness at key life turning points.

What they fund: Homelessness prevention delivered early, before crisis. The fund backs organisations whose main purpose is supporting people through one of four turning points: leaving prison or a young offenders’ institution, leaving care (up to age 25), leaving an abusive relationship, or leaving the asylum system on securing leave to remain. Support can go well beyond housing itself, covering immigration, welfare, health and safety advice, provided it leads into longer-term, relationship-based work. The £8 million fund will make 40 to 50 grants across England, Wales and the Isle of Man.

Typical grants: Two fixed tiers, both unrestricted and paid over four years. If your annual income is under £100,000, you can apply for £100,000 (four annual payments of £25,000). If your income is between £100,000 and £2 million, you can apply for £200,000 (four annual payments of £50,000). Every grant also comes with development support, practical tools and sector connections rather than money alone.

Who can apply: Registered charities and CIOs in England and Wales, or on the Isle of Man Index for Charities, and CICs limited by guarantee or limited by shares under Schedule 2. You need annual income between £25,000 and £2 million in your last published accounts, at least one full set of accounts showing as received, a board of at least three unrelated trustees or directors, a safeguarding policy with a trained Designated Safeguarding Lead, public liability insurance and an organisational bank account. You must have been delivering services to at least one of the four groups for a year or more, and still be delivering them now.

They will not fund infrastructure or umbrella bodies, organisations that mainly redistribute funding, schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, hospices, health authorities or emergency services. Faith-based organisations are welcome, but not where taking part in faith activity forms part of the support offered.

The angle: This is unrestricted money, so it can pay for the digital work that never fits a project budget: a proper case management system, a website that people in crisis can actually use on a phone, secure data handling, accessibility fixes, or the staff time to run any of it. The development support strengthens that further. Lloyds Bank Foundation explicitly name CRM and case management implementation, outcomes frameworks and improving how you collect and use data as things they can fund consultancy support for, and they are clear that they do not expect applicants to already have sophisticated monitoring systems. If your data and systems are the weak link, that is a reason to apply rather than a reason to hold back.

Four years of predictable core funding also changes what is sensible to build. A tool you can maintain and iterate for four years is a very different proposition from something built in a single grant year and then left to rot.

Worth knowing: Start with the two-minute eligibility quiz before you invest any real time, then read the full guidance PDF, which is also available in Welsh. An example application form is published as a Word document, so you can draft answers offline before you open the portal.

They will fund up to £500 of accessibility support to help you apply, covering BSL interpreters, translation, scribes or dyslexia software. They will not fund external bid writers.

If you have a live Lloyds Bank Foundation grant, it must end before 9 September 2027.

They have published a clear position on AI in applications: they are happy for you to use it for first drafts, structure, grammar and cutting word counts, but they read every application themselves and they are noticing submissions that read as generic. Specific examples and case studies from your own delivery are what carry weight. Also check anything AI produces for accuracy before it goes in, and think about what you are pasting into free tools given the sensitivity of your beneficiary data.

Application timetable

• Pre-application webinar with live Q&A and BSL translation: held 29 July 2026, recording and slides to follow on their site
• Applications close: 5pm, Wednesday 9 September 2026
• Shortlisting decisions communicated: by 14 November 2026
• Final funding decisions: by 18 December 2026

Book a call with their team through the funding page if you have questions the guidance does not answer.