The lack of funding for schools to fix their air is a problem and a restriction, as many of the programmes or actions to help clean the air cost money. There are occasional funding windows – we will post updates as and when we find grants to apply for.
The first port of call should usually be your local council, as the national government will often put money for specific air quality schemes through them, mainly through the Air Quality Grant programme, which is regularly updated. For example the £2.2 million grant that was made available to local authorities in March 2020 (Find out more).
In London, the Mayor’s Air Quality Fund (MAQF) is a £22 million fund over 10 years to support projects by London boroughs to improve air quality (Find out more)
The Mayor of London has set up the £12 million Greener City Fund which includes several grants including the Community Tree Planting and Green Space Grants (Find out more)
Groundwork has a grant available of up to £5,000 called the ‘Our Space Award’.
With scarce resources of public money available for schools to access to make their own clean air improvements, some schools resort to raising money from their parents and local communities instead. There are many well-known routes for PTAs to do this, from summer fairs to sponsored sports events (Groundwork has a fun A-Z list here), but there are also some schools focused crowdfunder sites that can help.
Rocketfund – A free crowdfunding platform for schools and PTAs
DonateMySchool – The UK’s first and only dedicated crowdfunding platform for schools