"We've got a slick, efficient grant process now. Happier team, way less paperwork. Going digital was not just a tech upgrade, it was a mindset shift, and it's really made all the difference."

Beverley Davies

Suffolk County Council

About Suffolk County Council's grant funding

Suffolk County Council runs a range of grant programmes for people and businesses across the county. Its grants team, led by Beverley Davies, is responsible for designing each fund and taking applicants all the way through the process, from the first application to the final claim.

Rather than keep that work spread across spreadsheets, inboxes and separate documents, the council brought its grant funding onto a single platform. Submit.com now carries the process from application to claim, so the team runs each programme in one place and applicants have one clear way to apply.

How Suffolk runs a grant from application to claim

Every Suffolk grant follows the same clear path on Submit.com. Applicants complete a guided online form. The team runs its due diligence checks. Applications are scored by a panel. Successful applicants receive their offer, and claims are processed against the award. The steps below show that journey.

Grants of any size, from community funds to major awards

Suffolk uses the platform for grants large and small. Smaller community grants are the simplest to run, usually settled with a single claim. Larger grants work the same way, including a one million pound award spread across eighteen months, where the council needs to follow cash flow over the life of the project.

For those longer grants, the value is not the deciding factor. What matters is that a single programme can carry multiple claims and multiple awards paid at intervals, so the team can track spend and cash flow as the project moves forward rather than losing sight of it between payments.

Handling cash and in-kind match funding

Many of Suffolk's grants ask applicants to bring their own contribution to a project. The funding table inside an application form is built to calculate that match funding as part of the overall cost, covering both cash and in-kind contributions.

The team sets whatever arithmetic each grant needs. Where a scheme requires fifty per cent match funding, for example, the form multiplies the amount requested and asks the applicant to confirm the funding they have in place. An extra column records whether each contribution is cash or in kind, and a form can use more than one table where the intervention rates call for it.

Reprofiling awards as projects evolve

Projects rarely stay still, so Suffolk needed a way to change an award after it had been made. A programme can include a change-request phase: an applicant receives provisional approval, then requests a change, and a different award can follow from that.

On the council's side, the office-use-only section records the reasons and the adjustments behind a reprofiled award. The team then reissues a communication to the applicant from that stored data, setting out that the grant has been reprofiled and what it means for their award, so the change is documented and clearly explained.

Review across the team, with the right permissions

Suffolk's grants are handled by more than one person, so the platform lets the council build a team and add members to each grant. Every member sees only the grants they are meant to access, and permissions control what each person can do.

Several people can open the same application and comment on it. Those comments can be kept private to the team, or made visible more widely where that suits the process. It gives the council room to run collaborative review without losing control of who sees what.

Managing subsidy control through self-certification

Subsidy control is a live concern for any funding council, and Suffolk manages it through self-certification. Most of its grants run under Minimal Financial Assistance (MFA), and the application asks each applicant to confirm how much they have already received and that they can receive more if they need it.

Applicants sign that confirmation when the offer letter goes out, then sign it again at the claim stage, so they self-certify at each key point. Alongside that, the team's due diligence checks the council's own systems for anything an applicant has not declared.

Working towards one platform across the council

Suffolk started with the grants its own team is responsible for, and the aim is to bring more of the council's funding onto the same platform over time. Running everything through one route is easier for staff and easier for applicants, and Beverley would like to see it adopted more widely across the council as other teams come on board.

Frequently asked questions