Three Guineas Trust – Access to Justice for Disabled People in the UK
Access to justice for Disabled people
Round 2 – 2025
Programme opens: 22 April 2025. Closing date for applications: 12 June 2025 by 6pm. Grant decisions released: Week of 6 October 2025.
This programme is for grants to projects supporting Disabled or neurodivergent people to exercise their rights on:
Income, welfare benefits or debt
Housing and homelessness
Community care
Personal liberty
Equal access to goods and services
This programme is for work that helps people in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
About the application process
The application process was co-designed with a grants panel of Disabled and neurodivergent people, and people with experience of community organisations, advice giving and the law. Applications will be shortlisted and reviewed by the panel. Applications will be rated using tools designed by the panel.
The final decision to award a grant belongs to the trustees. In the 2024 round of this grants programme, the panel recommended 14 projects for a grant and trustees agreed all of them.
What we mean by Disabled or neurodivergent people
This application uses the phrase Disabled or neurodivergent people to include, among others but not limited to:
Disabled people
neurodivergent people, including autistic people
Deaf and deafblind people
blind and partially sighted people
people with other sensory or motor conditions
people who find their day-to-day activities are limited by long-term physical or mental health conditions, or by people’s attitudes to these conditions (following the social model of disability)
Who we will fund
For this round, we will look at applications from not-for-profit organisations for work to provide legal advice, advocacy, or overcome barriers to access advice and advocacy services for Disabled or neurodivergent people as follows:
Legal advice
Legal advice accredited to one of the following:
Lexel
Legal Aid Agency Specialist Quality Mark
Advice Quality Standard
Money and Pensions Service Debt Advice Quality Framework
Scottish Legal Aid Board for Type 2 (casework) or Type 3 (advocacy, representation and mediation at a tribunal or court action level) advice
Northern Ireland Advice Quality Standard
Advocacy
Advocacy for individual people:
accredited to the Advocacy Quality Performance Mark
delivered using a recognised set of principles, standards and code of practice that includes training and supervision (for example the standard set out by the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance)
delivered using equivalent in-house standards, including training and supervision
Overcoming barriers to access
Organisations that work to help Disabled or neurodivergent people to overcome barriers to access to goods and services or to exercise their rights must demonstrate that they provide services to the standards set out above, or work with organisations that do (for example a Deaf-led advice organisation that partners with a law centre).
Partnerships and joint projects
Applications from more than one organisation are welcome provided they demonstrate that the work is directed by Disabled or neurodivergent people.
There is an extra statement in the application form for partnerships and joint projects.
Campaigning and policy advocacy
Applications that include campaigning and policy advocacy as part of the work must demonstrate that this will be done ethically and include ways to look after the people taking part.
There is an extra statement in the application form for work that includes campaigning and policy advocacy.
How much can I apply for and how long will the funding last?
We have earmarked a total of £1.5 million for this round of grants. The maximum annual grant will be £50,000 a year. Grants will be for up to 3 years’ funding.
There are no restrictions on what resources the grant can be used to pay for provided the work furthers Disabled or neurodivergent people’s access to justice.
What this programme will not fund
Organisations that currently have a grant from us (except a holiday scheme grant).
Organisations with an income or expenditure over £1 million. In working out this total you may ignore Access to Work and other access costs, and funds held on behalf of partnerships or consortia.
Organisations with unrestricted reserves worth more than a typical year’s expenditure.
Organisations that offer residential care of any kind.
Advice and advocacy that is not intentionally designed to help Disabled people. This funding is not targeted at general advice services that sometimes includes Disabled people among the people they help.
App and website development.
SEND advice and advocacy.
Immigration advice and advocacy.
Services provided by statutory services or as part of a partnership with one.
Statutory advocacy.
Work outside the UK.
How can I apply?
To express your interest please email grantmaking@threeguineastrust.org.uk. Include your name, the name of your organisation, your role there, and your email address. A phone number is helpful.
You will need to show us that you either:
provide legal advice to an accredited standard
offer advocacy services to an accredited standard, or using a high quality in house supervision and training programme
support people to overcome barriers to accessing legal advice or advocacy of this standard
Joint applications and partnership projects are welcome.
What information will I need provide?
We will send you an application form, guidance notes and a budget worksheet.
In your application we will ask you for:
Contact and organisational information
Some yes/no questions on governance, safeguarding and quality of advice
A summary of your project in one sentence (a project title)
One or two main outcomes for the grant and how you will measure these (100 words)
How Disabled or neurodivergent people are involved in making decisions in your work (100 words)
How Disabled or neurodivergent people are represented in your organisation, and how they are included in the design, leadership and delivery of your work (100 words)
About the people that you work well with and why (100 words)
About any groups of people you do not reach as well as you would like to, and any plans that you have to reach out to these people (100 words)
An example of how you support people who experience additional disadvantage because of their ethnicity, faith, cultural background, LGBTQ+ identity or age (100 words)
A description of what you plan to do and why, the communities you will work with, and how this work will benefit Disabled or neurodivergent people, and how this activity fits in with the rest of your work or services offered by other local organisations (350 words maximum)
A budget summary
Partnerships and joint projects: additional statement on leadership by an organisation of people with lived experience of being disabled
If this is a joint application or an application from a partnership, demonstrate that the organisational relationships put Disabled or neurodivergent people in the lead, and that they have the final say over the work (100 words)
Campaigning and policy work: additional statement on ethics and care of participants
If this application includes campaigning or policy work, describe how you will do this safely and ethically, and how you will look after the people taking part (100 words)
Documents
We will need a copy of these documents or a link to a where they can be found online:
Current safeguarding policy
Latest audited accounts or financial statement
A budget
Accessibility
We will consider funding reasonable accessibility requests to help you to compete this application. For example: PA time or BSL interpreter time. Please get in touch with us to discuss your access requirements.
We will not fund professional bid writers. In our experience applicants who make their case clearly and simply in their own words, avoiding jargon, do well.
https://threeguineastrust.org.uk/grants/access-to-law/