Funding restrictions for the Flexible fund

Please review the restrictions below carefully, to ensure your application will be eligible for funding through the Flexible fund. On this page you will find:

1. About applicants, partners, suppliers and beneficiaries
2. About activities, outputs and deliverables
3. About funding and eligible solutions

1. About applicants, partners, suppliers and beneficiaries

a. CITB will only enter into dialogue regarding proposals with a permanent employee of the organisation submitting the application. At CITB’s discretion third parties may join a discussion upon invitation by the applicant. Discussions are expected to be led by the applicant as confirmation of industry ownership.

b. No more than two organisations listed as partners in the application may be in the same single supply chain.

c. The fund cannot support any individuals who are not eligible under the CITB grant rules.

d. Activity should only benefit levy-registered employers or those employers who have the potential to become levy-registered employers.

e. Applications must be made by a consortium of at least three eligible organisations, to ensure project outcomes benefit wider industry. The applicant organisation will be the lead partner and coordinate project activities. Eligible organisations are:

• CITB-registered employers
• CITB-funded training groups
• Construction federations or trade associations.

2. About activities, outputs and deliverables

a. Unless otherwise stated, we will not fund:

• Educational activities, including any projects that relate to attracting and recruiting to the industry and any pre-employment programmes
• Items of capital expenditure
• Training awards, sponsorship, celebration events
• Standalone technical guidance or manuals
• Purchasing of software and licences
• Travel and subsistence
• Exclusively / 100% funded posts
• The development of qualifications that are supported by the Sector Skills Council.

b. We will fund any combination of the following activities as part of a project:

• Training materials, which include technical guidance that is especially designed for training purpose. Specific training outcomes need to be clearly defined and form the basis of any such requests
• The marketing of new training programmes and qualifications that have been developed as a result of the funded project, including promotional materials
• We will consider the part-funding of activities which support the delivery of outputs and outcomes of a project
• Training videos and online courses which are made freely available to the wider industry and where it can be established that learning has taken place by other means than viewing statistics.

c. Products developed to be used online must offer a transferrable solution and make use of existing platforms.

d. Projects with outcomes or subject matter that is covered by a scheduled commission will only be funded through that commission, when it is scheduled for publication. We will inform you if your project duplicates any projects that are aiming for similar outcomes that are part of a commission.

3. About funding and eligible solutions

a. Grant should be excluded from the request and, where available, should be claimed through the CITB grant scheme.

b. A contribution of at least 30% of the project value must be made by the applicant, excluding any element of CITB grant. Projects must not duplicate products or services which already exist and adequately meet the stated needs.

c. There must be no other funding support available for the project through alternative channels which sufficiently meet the stated needs, such as government skills funding.

d. We will not fund any activity that occurs in the past, or outside the dates set out in the project funding agreement.