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This page will help you apply to the Seed Sourcing Grant (SSG).

You can find the application forms and further details on the SSG forms page.

What to do before applying

Before completing your application, you should:

• read this page and the SSG guidance page thoroughly
• read the ‘eligible species and activities’
• ensure you have funds available to purchase items and/or pay for work up front as the grant is paid in arrears
• get quotes so you’re confident in the estimates you provide in your finance spreadsheet and can ensure good value for money
• speak to suppliers and contractors about delivery times and availability to ensure items or work can be delivered on time

Funding beyond March 2026 is subject to the next government spending review. If future funding is not secured (for financial years 2026/27 and 2027/28) we will terminate multi-year agreements at the end of 2025/26 by providing at least 1 months’ notice to agreement holders.

You should consider this when planning your project activities.

Overview of the application process

To apply, you must complete:

• a SSG application form
• a SSG finance spreadsheet
• evidence of financial viability if applicable
• a map (only applies to seed stand or orchard planting)

These should be submitted to ssg@forestrycommission.gov.uk by 11:55pm on Tuesday 19 August 2025.

We will notify applicants of their SSG funding decision by Tuesday 30 September 2025.

How to complete your application

All sections of the application form and finance spreadsheet are mandatory, and you must complete the forms in English.

Do not make any alterations to the layout or format of the forms.

If any part of your application is incomplete, we will return your application to you within 3 working days for you to revise and resubmit before the deadline. If any part of your application is unclear, we may contact you to request further information.

If you need to amend your application before the published deadline or withdraw your application at any time, email: ssg@forestrycommission.gov.uk ÌýÌý

Part 1: Application details

Applicant details

The ‘applicant organisation’ is the organisation that will be named on the grant agreement if successful and to whom grant payments will be paid. The ‘applicant organisation’ will be responsible for the undertakings and obligations detailed in any grant agreement, in line with the terms and conditions of funding.

Enter the organisation’s legal name. If this is different to how you are known publicly, include the public-facing name in brackets.

Include the name and contact details of the lead applicant. The person included in this section must also sign the form in Part 10.

Provide one of the following:

• a company registration number (preferred)
• charity number (preferred)
• VAT registration number
• Unique Taxpayer Reference

Eligibility criteria

Read the eligibility criteria in this section carefully and respond to each question by completing the Yes/No/NA columns.

All projects will be assessed against these eligibility criteria before they are scored by the evaluation panel. If you answer No or do not answer any questions, your application will be rejected.

Part 2: Project details

The information provided in this section will form part of any grant agreement if successful and will be used to help monitor project progress.

Project summary and objectives

Summarise your project and its main objectives.

We may ask for permission to share this publicly if your application is successful.

Tick the relevant box(es) to make it clear in which financial year(s) the project will take place.

Register of UK Basic Materials

If you’re applying to manage basic material that is already on the Register of UK Basic Materials, you will also need to provide the Basic Material IDs (BMIDs) for these. The BMID can be found on the Register of UK Basic Materials.

Land ownership

If applicable, provide details about the land on which any new seed stands and/or seed orchards will be located or managed (where known).

You should attach a map of the site highlighting where the seed stands and/or seed orchards will be located as part of your application. If you do not own the land on which resulting seed sources are located, please provide:

• evidence that the landowner is supportive of your proposal
• details about how sharing of benefits from transfer of plant material will be managed (for example, by a draft material transfer agreement)

Funded activities

List your proposed activities by financial year. Break down the project step-by-step so the panel can understand what your project will involve. For example, ‘installation of deer fencing’ or ‘collection of scions from 30 plus trees’. You can use bullet points.

You can find a list of eligible and ineligible costs on the SSG guidance page.

Outputs

List your expected project outputs by financial year. Where relevant, you need to provide:

• which species your project will cover
• what category of FRM your project will result in, eligible FRM categories are:
  • Source-Identified seed standsÌýÌý
  • Indigenous Source-Identified seed stands 
  • Selected seed stands 
  • Tested seed stands 
  • Qualified seed orchards 
  • Tested seed orchards
• how many seed stands or orchards your project will result in being planted, managed or registered
• the estimated number of trees, if you’re planting a new seed stand or orchard
• the area of seed stand or orchard that you will plant or manage

Include quantifiable milestones where possible.

Read the for help with FRM categories your project will result in, or email FRM@forestrycommission.gov.uk.

Long-term outcomes

Outline the expected outcomes of the project beyond the funding period, including the volume of seed you expect to be brought to market annually.

Include quantifiable milestones where possible.

Part 3: Assessment questions

The questions in this section will be scored by the evaluation panel. The weighting of the scores is given in brackets next to each question. Read more about How applications are assessed and scored.

You must answer all questions in this section. Each question has a word limit and any information significantly exceeding this will not be evaluated.

You can append documents to your application to support your answers (for example, Gantt charts, quotes, maps, or CVs). You should refer to these clearly in the relevant question.

Make it clear if any of the expected outcomes outlined in your answers are dependent on external factors (for example, acquisition of land or recruitment of a new member of staff).

Part 4: Finances

You must complete and submit a finance spreadsheet with your application form. This forms part of your answer to Question 8: Costs and Value for Money.

Read ‘How to complete your finance spreadsheet’ for more information.

Parts 5 to 9

Read the information in these sections carefully.

In Part 8: Declarations, tick each box to show that you have read, understood, and agree to each declaration. If you fail to comply with any obligations your application may be rejected.

Part 10: Authorisation 

Once you have completed your application form and finance spreadsheet, sign the form.

You must either add a

• digital e-signature: click/tap on the signature box and follow the instructions
• printed signature: print the form, sign it by hand ²¹²Ô»åÌýscan it back in

We cannot accept typed signatures.

The person signing the form must be the lead applicant named in Part 1.

How to complete your finance spreadsheet

Read the Instructions tab of the finance spreadsheet before starting.

Your finance spreadsheet outlines how you propose to spend the grant funding and will form your budget for the project if you are successful.

You must list all proposed project costs in your finance spreadsheet. Be as specific as possible, listing each item or piece of work to be completed.

If successful, you will need to link each cost you claim for to the relevant item reference in your finance spreadsheet, so ensure the information you include is comprehensive and all anticipated costs are included.

If you’re VAT registered, all items should be exclusive of any VAT that can be recovered from HMRC. If you are unable to recover VAT on a cost, include the VAT in the total amount you provide. If you can recover VAT on a cost, provide the cost exclusive of VAT.

Get quotes before applying and ensure all costs are deliverable in the funding period and the financial year in which you apply for them. Agreements are likely to be issued in September/October 2025. This may be delayed if the panel request further information from you so build in contingency. Items must be received, and work completed between the start and end of your agreement. Any costs incurred outside of your funding period will not be eligible to claim back.

If you are likely to need Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) seed or data, contact MSBUKSeeds@kew.org to provide costings before the application is submitted and include these costs in the finance spreadsheet.

Personnel costs

List all personnel who will work on the project, whether internal or external.

Non-personnel costs

Include all other project costs in this section.

Choose a Cost Type (Materials and Supplies, Works and Services, Equipment and Travel and Subsistence) for each item applied for.

Summary of costs

Check the details in the ‘Grant Funding Summary’ table in this tab. The table is auto filled based on the information you entered in the previous tabs.

Before submitting, check that:

• all costs are correct
• you are only applying for eligible species and associated activities
• you are only applying for eligible costs
• you have applied for costs in the correct financial year
• the ‘summary of costs’ table is correct
• the total funding applied for is no less than £2,000
• the total funding applied for in each financial year is no more than £75,000

Financial viability evidence

If you are a local authority, public body or university and the value of the capital items you are applying for exceeds £50,000, you need to submit a departmental letter of authority to spend on capital items in the agreement.

You must submit this with your application.

Departmental letters must:

• come from someone with decision making capacity, such as a member of the finance department, or the head of the department through which the project will be delivered
• acknowledge the total cost of capital items
• confirm that the department has sufficient funds to deliver the capital costs of the project up front and they understand that claims will be paid in arrears

You can find the total value of capital costs for your application in the ‘summary of costs’ tab of your finance spreadsheet.

If you have applied for or been awarded funding for multiple projects under the Tree Production Innovation Fund, Tree Production Capital Grant and Seed Sourcing Grant, the £50,000 threshold is cumulative. This means that we will use the total of all unpaid agreements and pending applications to determine whether we require this additional evidence.

If you are not a local authority, public body or university we may be in contact to request evidence of financial viability if your application exceeds a certain threshold.

How to submit your application

The deadline for applications is 11:55pm Tuesday 19 August 2025.

How applications are assessed

All applications will be evaluated and scored by a panel with expertise and experience of tree production methods used in England. If the grant is oversubscribed, funding will be awarded to the highest scoring applications.

The evaluation panel will apply the following evaluation system to each of the assessment questions:

Score	Description
0	Unacceptable - Nil or inadequate response. Fails to demonstrate how the assessment criteria are met.
1	Poor - Response is partially relevant and/or poor. The response contains insufficient/limited detail or explanation to demonstrate evidence of meeting the assessment criteria.
2	Acceptable - Response is relevant and acceptable. The response provides sufficient evidence of meeting the assessment criteria and covers the majority of points expected for a given criterion.
3	Good - Response is relevant and good. The response provides full details of how the assessment criteria will be fulfilled covering all of the points expected for a given criterion.
4	Excellent - Response is completely relevant and excellent overall, possibly exceeding requirements. A well thought through project with all elements of question fully addressed and detail provided that exceeds some or all of the requirements. The response is comprehensive and provides a high level of detail on how the assessment criteria are met.

For question 1 ‘Approach and rationale’ and question 2 ‘Sector capacity’, the scores will be doubled, giving these criteria a 20% weighting. In the event of a tie and there being insufficient funds to support all projects, responses to ‘Approach and rationale’ will be used to break the tie, with the highest score winning. If the applications are still tied, the decision will be up to the evaluation panel.

If your application scores 0 for any of the scored questions or scores less than 20/40 overall, it will be unsuccessful.

Example:

Question	Score (out of 4)
Approach and rationale (20%)	3
Sector capacity (20%)	2
Team, resources, and track record (10%)	4
Market awareness (10%)	2
Deliverability (10%)	2
Risks (10%)	3
Additionality (10%)	3
Costs and value for money (10%)	3

The score for ‘Approach and rationale’ and ‘Sector capacity’ would be doubled (3 x 2 = 6, 2 x 2 = 4) and added to the remaining 6 scores giving a total score of 28/40.

Any applications deemed to fall outside the scope of the fund or that do not meet the SSG eligibility criteria will not be evaluated and will be rejected.

The evaluation panel will have access to information about the delivery of previous SSG grant agreements you may have held and may use this to help score your response to the ‘Deliverability’ question.

Application outcomes

Refer to the SSG process diagram for an overview of the application process.

Once the evaluation panel convene and each application’s outcome is decided, the SSG team will send out all outcome letters by Tuesday 30 September 2025.

We will issue you with one of the following:

1. Successful outcome letter: your application was successful. You will also receive a grant agreement.
2. Unsuccessful outcome letter: your application was unsuccessful.
3. ‘Offer in principle letter’ and ‘offer in principle form’: the evaluation panel requires further information before deciding whether to award funding.

The ‘offer in principle form’ outlines the evaluation panel’s comments and requests. You must complete the relevant sections in the form and provide the necessary information, clarification and/or documents requested. You must email your response within 2 weeks or request an extension if you are unable to make the deadline. If you do not submit a response or request an extension by the deadline, your application will be unsuccessful.

If successful, you must sign and return the grant agreement by email before beginning any project activities. Items purchased or activities conducted prior to the start of your grant agreement will not be eligible to claim for.

We will send you an SSG information pack explaining SSG processes and answering common grant holder queries.

Reporting

All successful applicants will be required to complete a full report of the project at the end of each financial year and end of the funding period. The reports must detail achievement against stated outcome and outputs, lessons learnt, a complete cost breakdown outlining how the grant funding has been spent and any need for further development.

Templates for the end of year and end of project reports will be provided to successful applicants.

For multi-year agreements the following due dates have been set for end of year reports. You should consider these when planning project activities:

• financial year 2025-26 – Friday 27 March 2026
• financial year 2026-27 – Saturday 27 March 2027
• financial year 2027-28 – Monday 27 March 2028

Further informationÌýÌý

If you need to clarify any application requirements or the application process, email  ssg@forestrycommission.gov.uk.

If we consider information requests relevant to any applicant, we will provide additional guidance to all applicants (via point of contact provided) by email to ensure a fair and open process. We may be unable to respond to some requests due to the competitive bid process. We reserve the right not to answer clarifications where we consider that the answer to that clarification would or would be likely to prejudice commercial interests.

Applicants who canvass Forestry Commission or Defra employees associated with the TPCG may have their applications rejected from the process.

Terms and conditions

The terms and conditions that will apply to this grant are detailed in the grant agreement template on the SSG application form page.

Funding decisions may be conditional on the outcome of a physical inspection by the Forestry Commission to ensure the suitability of the site and proposals.

Confidentiality

If you consider the information contained within your application to be commercially sensitive, you must notify us of this when submitting your application. This will then be considered when requests for clarification are received.

The Forestry Commission reserves the right not to answer clarifications where it considers that the answer to that clarification would or would be likely to prejudice commercial interests.

Contact us

If you have questions about the SSG or the application process, email us at ssg@forestrycommission.gov.uk

Find out how to make a complaint or appeal.