The process
Step 1 – Check you are eligible
Before you apply to the Access to Elected Office Fund, please check that you are eligible. To check your eligibility, visit the ‘About the fund’ page and the Electoral Commission website.
Step 2 – Apply
You can apply for between £250 and £10,000 in any calendar year (1 January to 31 December). You can submit more than one application to the fund but together they must not exceed £10,000 a year.
You can apply using the online application form, by phone, by textphone, or in writing (please contact us so we can arrange this for you).
Please make sure you read the guidance notes to help you fill in the application form. If you apply online, you can save your application part-way through and return to it later.
You are responsible for making sure that you are eligible to stand for election. For more information, visit the Electoral Commission website.
Please do not send us your evidence when you apply – we will contact you when we need to see this. Please just tick the appropriate boxes to tell us which documents you are going to provide.
Once we receive your application, we will give you a reference number which you can use if you need to contact us about your application.
Step 3 – We will process your application
If you have applied for less than £500, we will let you know our decision within one month. If we approve your application, we will contact you to ask you to send us evidence of your name and address and evidence relating to your disability. Your application also needs to be supported by an independent referee (if you are not linked to a political party) or member of your political party. To download a template reference form, please click here. You will need to send us original documents.
After checking your documents, we will send you an offer letter and acceptance form, which you must sign and return to us. We will also send you guidance for claiming your grant and return your original documents to you by registered post.
If we cannot approve your application, we will contact you to explain why and provide information about how you can appeal our decision.
If you have applied for £500 or more (or if you put in more than one application and they come to more than £500 together), we must send it to the Access to Elected Office Fund Advisory Panel to review. You can find the cut-off dates here.
Before we pass your application to the panel, we will contact you to ask you to send us evidence of your name and address and evidence relating to your disability. Your application also needs to be supported by an independent referee (if you are not linked to a political party) or member of your political party. To download a template reference form, please click here.
You will need to send us original documents and we must receive these at least one week before the date of the panel meeting for us to be able to process your application. We will send you our decision in writing within one week of the panel meeting.
If we approve your application, we will send you an offer letter and acceptance form, which you must sign and return to us. We will also send you guidance for claiming your grant and return your original documents to you by registered post.
If we cannot approve your application, we will contact you to explain why and provide information about how you can appeal our decision.
Step 4 – Claim your funding
If your application is successful, we will write to you with a formal offer letter and details of how to claim your grant.
Please remember the payment process is separate from the application process and will take place after the date you receive your grant letter. We will process your payment after you send us invoices and receipts for the items you set out in your application.
When you are ready to claim your funding, please send us invoices and receipts and a breakdown of the costs using the template we will give you. Once we receive these we will arrange your payment. We will process payments on the second and last Friday of the month.
As a general principle, we do not fund applications for payments you have already made (retrospectively). However, in recognition of the fact that the process of applying can take some time, if your application is successful, the fund will reimburse you for costs you have incurred from up to two months before the date of the grant offer letter, provided you can evidence them with receipts or invoices. However, you must not rely on this in advance of receiving a grant letter. Please do not assume that your application will be successful and run up costs that you cannot pay before you receive a decision about your application.
Last updated: July 5, 2012
Case Studies
Read about disabled people who are active in politics.
