Aims/priorities: The funding is intended for projects supporting Disabled or neurodivergent people to exercise their rights on:
- Income, welfare benefits or debt
- Housing and homelessness
- Community care
- Personal liberty
- Equal access to goods and services
This programme is for work that helps people in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Who can apply? Applications will be accepted from not-for-profit organisations for work to provide legal advice, advocacy, or overcome barriers to access advice and advocacy services for Disabled or neurodivergent people as follows:
- Lexel accreditation
- Legal Aid Agency Specialist Quality Mark
- Advice Quality Standard
- Money and Pensions Service Debt Advice Quality Framework
- Scottish Legal Aid Board for Type 2 (casework) or Type 3 (advocacy, representation and mediation at a tribunal or court action level) advice
- Northern Ireland Advice Quality Standard
Advocacy for individual people:
- Accredited to the Advocacy Quality Performance Mark
- Delivered using a recognised set of principles, standards and code of practice that includes training and supervision (for example the standard set out by the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance)
- Delivered using equivalent in-house standards, including training and supervision
Overcoming barriers to access - organisations that work to help Disabled or neurodivergent people to overcome barriers to access to goods and services or to exercise their rights must demonstrate that they provide services to the standards set out above, or work with organisations that do (for example a Deaf-led advice organisation that partners with a law centre).
Applications that include campaigning and policy advocacy as part of the work must demonstrate that this will be done ethically and include ways to look after the people taking part.
Grant amount: A total of £1.5 million is available for the 2025 grant round.
The maximum annual grant will be £50,000 a year. Grants can run for one to three years.
Application process: Guidance notes are available on the Three Guineas Trust website.
The first step is for groups to express an interest and this can be done by sending an email to the Trust with their name, the name of their organisation, their role, their email address and a phone number.
Applicants will need to show that they either:
- Provide legal advice to an accredited standard
- Offer advocacy services to an accredited standard, or using a high quality in house supervision and training programme
- Support people to overcome barriers to accessing legal advice or advocacy of this standard
An application form, guidance notes and a budget worksheet will then be sent to eligible applicants.
Joint applications and partnership projects are welcome.
Contact Three Guineas Trust for further information.
Deadline: Applications are now open with a deadline of 12 June 2025 (18:00).
Contact information: Email: grantmaking@threeguineastrust.org.uk
Website: https://threeguineastrust.org.uk/grants/access-to-law/