£87.5m of dormant assets funneled into social investment by UK Government
Published on the 2nd June 2025, the UK Government’s new Dormant Assets Scheme Strategy commits £87.5 million to good causes across England.
‘Dormant Assets’ are pots of money from accounts or financial products from – e.g. – abandoned bank accounts and unclaimed pensions. When all efforts to contact the owners of the funds have been exhausted, business who have chosen to participate in the scheme transfer the funds to Reclaim Fund Ltd (RFL) a not-for-profit public body owned by HM Treasury. That money is then made available for good causes through the The Dormant Assets Scheme. CCF, through some of its programmes and partnership funds, uses funds from Dormant assets, through The Access Foundation, to invest across the community co-operative, community business, charity and social enterprise sectors.
RFL retains enough cash to pay customers who claim at a later date, and then releases what remains above that to The National Lottery Community Fund (TNLCF), who is the named distributor of all dormant assets funding. Then, as gov.uk explains, “TNLCF in turn apportions the money it receives from RFL between the 4 nations of the UK. While DCMS can provide broad policy directions to TNLCF for the English portion of funding, the Devolved Administrations and TNLCF are responsible for dormant assets funding in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.”
The £87.5million for social investment is just part of the story. Based on existing assets, estimates and forecasts, the government expects a total of £440 million to be available through the Scheme by 2028. They expect to distribute the funds to four key areas as below.
- £132.5 million for the provision of services, facilities or opportunities to meet the needs of young people
- £132.5 million for the development of individuals’ ability to manage their finances or the improvement of access to personal financial services
- £87.5 million to Access – The Foundation for Social Investment £12.5 million will reach organisations that support improved youth outcomes, and £12 million of scale-up funding for a Black and Ethnically Minoritised-led social investment fund, Pathway Fund
- £87.5 million for community wealth funds
Our friends and partners Access, and Better Society Capital (was Big Society Capital) work alongside Youth Futures Foundation, and Fair4All Finance to deliver on this strategy.
Access – who do not directly grant funds to organisations but instead funnel money through organisations like ours – are currently consulting on their investment Policy and application processes. If you are part of, or are connected to, the social investment market, the VCSE sector, they want to hear from you. They’re running two webinars, on the 18th and 25th June and the deadline for responses to the consultation is midday on Tuesday the 15th July.
Find out more about what Access are doing and how to have your say here.