Climate action hubs: apply to set one up

Assessing your application

Once we receive your completed application we will review it along with members of the Climate Action Hub Advisory Board, which is made up of representatives from climate action organisations. 

We will check to make sure your application has been fully filled out, meets the fund aims, criteria and eligibility requirements. We might ask you to provide further information to support your proposal.

If we receive more than one application from an area, we will encourage applicants to work together to develop a single proposal.

We may share information from your application with your local council and Third Sector Interface, to help us understand how your proposal fits with local circumstances. We may also share this information with other agencies including other grant making bodies.

Funding criteria

Your application will be assessed against the following key criteria.

Support for Scottish Government priorities

Applications should support Scottish Government priorities, particularly those relating to tackling and adapting to climate change, biodiversity and ensuring a just transition to net zero

Advance greater inclusion, equality and diversity 

Applications should demonstrate how hub activity will advance greater inclusion, equality and diversity, particularly with respect to the range of ‘voices’ engaging in community climate action

Community involvement

Applications should demonstrate clear community involvement. There must be a clear demand for a hub amongst the communities it would serve, or evidence of the impact that a hub could have. The key objectives of the hub must be shaped by communities and hubs must evidence how they will continue to be responsive to community need.

Widening participation

Projects must deliver increased awareness and understanding of climate change and enable the community to make informed choices to reduce its impact on climate change, or adapt to the impacts that are already ‘locked in’. The hub must seek involvement from a diverse range of groups and communities across the region, such that it can be considered to truly represent the communities’ needs and priorities.

Partnership working/collaboration

The hub must seek to build on existing activity and link into relevant local authorities and other key stakeholders to enable sustained and coherent action. Applicants must set out how they will work in partnership with other local organisations that are engaged in similar or related work. Hubs must signpost to existing activity to avoid duplication of work and build on existing networks/activity.

Network build

Individual hubs must be a functioning part of the wider hub network and link into and develop relevant local, regional and national networks.

Community voice

Hubs must represent and promote the views and needs of communities across the region to ensure that local people’s voices are heard at a national level.

Think broadly

Hubs should engage with a diversity of local groups (youth groups, the arts and culture sectors, sports groups, voluntary organisations) and seek to address multiple outcomes that are complementary to community climate action (reducing fuel poverty, reducing inequalities, supporting mental health)