Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what the terms of reference are for the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund; and over which years that funding will be allocated.

The Know Your Neighbourhood (KYN) Fund was launched in January 2023 as an up to £30 million package of funding designed to widen participation in volunteering and tackle loneliness in 27 disadvantaged areas across England. This funding supported people living in disadvantaged areas to connect with others in their community and engage in volunteering, with the aim of improving wellbeing and pride in local areas.

In April 2025, the KYN Fund was extended until March 2026, with an additional up to £4.5 million of government funding. This funding will uplift existing grant awards to organisations in the 27 eligible delivery areas that had previously received KYN funding between 2022 and 2025, to enable them to continue delivery up until March 2026. It will build upon the original KYN objectives with funded projects also aimed at reducing loneliness stigma and building community cohesion.

The objectives of the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund are, by March 2026:

• To increase the proportion of people in targeted high-deprivation local authorities who volunteer at least once a month.

• To reduce the proportion of chronically lonely people in targeted high-deprivation local authorities who lack desired level of social connections.

• To build the evidence to identify scalable and sustainable place-based interventions that work in increasing regular volunteering and reducing chronic loneliness.

• To enable targeted high-deprivation local authorities, and the local voluntary and community sector in these places, to implement sustainable systems and processes that encourage volunteering and tackling loneliness.