The Grass Pitch Maintenance Fund is a £14m fund that provides eligible clubs and leagues with a tapered six-year grant to help them sustain pitches already at a 'good' level and enhance pitches that are either considered 'poor' or 'basic'.

The fund is a key part of the Football Foundation's Grass Pitch Improvement Programme - an ambition to deliver 20,000 quality grass pitches by 2030.

How much can we apply for?
Funding falls into two categories - enhance or sustain. Your PitchPower pitch inspection (a requirement of the grant) will provide you with a Performance Quality Standard (PQS) per pitch - which will help us decide how much funding you'll be eligible for - and a list of maintenance recommendations which you'll need to carry out as part of your grant award.

Grants are paid annually for six years but tapered down during that time. The amounts below show the grant values for the first year at 100% funding.

Enhance
For pitches with a Performance Quality Standard (PQS) of 'basic' or below              

Sustain
For pitches with a PQS of 'good' or higher 

What can the grant be spent on?
The funding provided must be used to carry out the recommendations from your PitchPower Assessment Report. These can include:

Contractor works e.g. slitting, scarification or decompaction
Purchasing materials e.g. seed or fertiliser
Purchasing equipment e.g. Soil Sampler
Routine maintenance work such as grass cutting and line marking aren't eligible.

What do you mean by a 'tapered' grant?
Tapered means that we'll pay a reduced percentage of the initial grant value every two years with the club making up the difference. For example, the grant awarded for an 11v11 pitch that needs enhancing would be £2,500 in year 1 and 2, £1,667 in year 3 and 4 and £833 in year 5 and 6.

Grass Pitch Maintenance Fund
Ready to get started on your application? Click the 'apply now' button to log in to your Football Foundation account and then select 'Football Foundation funding' from the grants available window.

Remember, you won't be able to apply until you've completed a pitch inspection using the PitchPower app.
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Nutley FC applied for funding and had this to say following approval of their application: "Thank you very much for awarding us funding from the Grass Pitch Maintenance Fund. We’re really looking forward to improving our pitches. We’ve got a brilliant feeling in the club at the moment and plenty of juniors progressing to youth and shortly to adults. We need the pitches tip-top to support them. Thank you very much again."

For more information on the funding please contact:

Projects
T: 01903 753547 (option 6)
E: Info@SussexFA.com