National Education Nature Park grant

The grant is being funded by the Department for Education and administered by the RHS.

There will be a second round of grants in the 2024-25 school year. Eligibility for this grant will be announced in autumn 2024.

The 2023-24 grant is for up to £10,000. This has to be spent and expenditure reports submitted by 23 July 2024.

The National Education Nature Park and associated grant provides the opportunity for children and young people to develop a meaningful connection to nature and an understanding of our role to act on the biodiversity and climate crises.

The habitat enhancements made possible by the grant should therefore involve children and young people in making the decisions about how your education setting will spend your grant. The Nature Park has two specific activity packages, which will ensure young people are at the centre of decision making and feel empowered to take action to improve and care for nature on their education site. Explore the Getting Started and Start Planning for Nature packages.

The grant will be paid in advance, so you will need to know how much you will spend before you fill in the application. When we have approved your application for funding and you accept your grant agreement, you are welcome to start buying the items you have included in your application. You do not have to wait for the grant payment to arrive.

In 2023-24, the grant can only be used on grey to green habitat enhancements. The total amount of all expenditure can be no more than £10,000.

You can spend up to £10,000 on plants, plant containers, planting material such as compost or topsoil, gravel, water holders and irrigation equipment.

There are limits on other types of expenditure:

• You can spend up to £2,000 in total on sheds or other equipment storage, wet weather gear, tools, gloves or other gardening gear
• You can spend up to £2,000 on fieldwork resources that will help you carry out your project and enable outdoor learning, e.g. tablets to map your site and measure and record biodiversity. This can be equipment such as tablets, humidity meters, light meters, camera traps and stationery. This portion of the grant can also fund protective covers and insurance for devices
• You can use up to 50 percent of the grant amount on specialist support such as contractors or biodiversity experts. For example, you might pay a biodiversity expert to assess your site using the grey to green guidance, and tell you what habitat enhancements will be most effective in improving a grey area of your school grounds. Alternatively, you might pay a contractor to dig up a paved area and plant trees. The specialist must contribute directly to your capital project. The grant can’t be used to pay for workshops or training.

In 2023-24, your project must be used to create new areas of natural habitat in a space at your school that currently has very low value biodiversity. The aim is to create new greener areas that support a much greater diversity of life. This means you must make your habitat enhancements on:

• Ground currently covered e.g. paving, concrete, gravel or rubble or
• Bare, compacted earth, or
• Fences/walls*, or
• Roofs.

You can use your grant to plant up or install a pond on top of these grey spaces, or you can use it to remove covered grey space and add your interventions to the resulting bare earth. Remember that planting in the ground is much more sustainable for the long-term. See the grey to green guidance for further details.

*If you are planting a green fence or wall, you can plant in the ground at the base of the fence or wall.

The grey to green enhancements can be ponds, grasslands and wildflowers, flower, fruit and vegetable planters, trees, green walls or roofs and water butts or other irrigation. Any intervention that is not classified as grey to green will not be eligible for the grant in 2023-24.

Microhabitats can be bought with the grant, but decisions about adding these kinds of items should follow mapping microhabitats activities.

As the focus for 2023-2024 is grey to green, we advise using the grant funds to install planting or natural habitats that will provide a foundation for these species later down the line. In the future the Nature Park hopes to bring online engagement activity so young people can decide on what microhabitat is most appropriate for their site, to ensure these fantastic resources are best utilised and don’t lead to any disappointment on not becoming inhabited. The grey to green intervention suggestions include various options to introduce greenery and create green corridors on your site that will help animals such as hedgehogs, birds and bugs. The microhabitats should be part of a wider grey to green project and consider corridors and food sources to increase the likelihood that they will become inhabited.

You should include the cost of your microhabitat alongside the relevant biodiversity intervention in the application form. For example, if you expect fruit bushes you are adding to attract invertebrates, put the cost of a bug hotel in the ‘Adding flowers/fruit/vegetables’ budget line.

Yes, you can combine other sources of funding with this grant to spend on the grey to green habitat enhancements. In the application form, we will ask what other funding you have. This is for project evaluation purposes and won't affect the amount we give you.

When you join the Nature Park, you will be sent regular emails that take you step by step through the Nature Park programme so you know what to do when. You will also be invited to webinars in autumn 2023 about the grants programme and about the Nature Park. You can use part of the grant to pay for expert help and guidance.

You should only use the grant for grey to green habitat enhancements and for items set out in the above FAQs. You can move expenditure around within the eligible items as long as it stays within the amount limits for each type of item i.e.:

• Up to £2,000 for fieldwork equipment
• Up to £2,000 for other resources such as a shed or other equipment storage, wet water gear and tools, gloves and other gardening gear
• Up to 50% of your total grant amount on a Contractor/Project Support Officer/External expert cost

When you accept your grant agreement, there will be at least a two-week processing period before your grant payment is sent. We ask you to bear with us in the meantime. We will email an expected payment date. If you applied after 20 April 2024, your payment is likely to arrive at the end of May or in the first week of June.

The grant must be spent by 23 July 2024, though the project can continue after this date. If you know that you won’t be able to spend all your grant by this date, contact [email protected] and we will send instructions for returning the unspent portion.

The grant agreement requires you to keep all receipts. We will carry out expenditure audits of some schools.

As part of your grey to green project, you can spend part of your grant on making your new green space more accessible. For example, putting down surfaces that are suitable for wheelchairs. The types of items that are eligible will be decided on a case-by-case basis, so please email us to check.

The eligible schools and educational settings have been chosen by the Department for Education. 1,205 settings in England will be invited to apply for the grant. See the Nature Park and Climate Action Awards funding allocation page to find out how the list of eligible schools and how eligibility was determined. If your school is not on this list, visit our Finding Funding page for other biodiversity and outdoor education funding options.

See Nature Park and Climate Action Awards funding allocations page for the list of eligible schools and how eligibility was determined.

If you are a governor or a parent at an eligible school, please share information about the grants with a member of staff. School staff should check with relevant stakeholders to agree who should fill in the application form on behalf of the school. The RHS will email eligible schools beginning in October 2023 with information about the grants programme.

Let us know who the lead contact for your school will be by emailing [email protected].

There is an online form, which should take around 25 minutes on average to fill in. You will need a bank statement for the account the grant will be paid into. The statement must be from the last three months.

The application will close on 1 May 2024.

Your filled in application can be seen by going to the Application Portal and selecting View.

When you have opened the application, you can use the button on the top of the page to print your application as a PDF. The budget table is also included in the Grant Agreement letter attached to your grant offer email.

• Join the National Education Nature Park
• Take part in the Hidden Nature challenge to get a flavour of the National Education Nature Park

• Plan how you will spend your grant with these Nature Park resources:

  • Ensure learners are involved in the intervention using the Getting Started and Start Planning for Nature packages on the National Education Nature Park website
  • Do the site boundary activity. This must be done before you apply for the grant
• Read the FAQs for further information
• Browse and sign up to our range of webinars, which explore key elements of the nature park programme
• Watch the recording from the National Education Nature Park grant webinar, which will get you ready for the grants programme
• Share information about the grant with relevant members of staff. Any member of staff can apply for this grant, but we expect that you consult with your stakeholders and include children and young people in the process

You will be sent two or three reporting forms to fill in inside the grant portal. You will be able to find these on the release date by going to the Application Portal and selecting the Reporting button.

The Nature Park grantee survey will be emailed to you on 27 June and the deadline is 15 July even if you are still spending the grant and your project is ongoing. This survey is optional and will ask for your feedback on the grant programme, project outcomes and case studies. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us to improve the grant programme to best support education settings through the grant programme next academic year.

The Annex Gii form will be emailed to you on 2 July. This form is required by the funder, the Department for Education. The deadline to submit is 26 July.

Some schools will also be asked to send a more detailed expenditure form – The Nature Park grant expenditure audit. This audit is required by the funder, the Department for Education. If you are chosen for an audit, the form will be sent to you on 2 July and the deadline to submit is 26 July.

Please note you have agreed in your grant agreement to keep all receipts and invoices for seven years.