12.08.2025: Arts Council England has been forced to pause its National Lottery Project Grant (NLPG) scheme after technical issues hit its Grantium grants application portal.

The organisation revealed it was facing “technical challenges” which meant that it would have to “temporarily pause applications”. It said it hoped to resolve the problem by mid-September in an announcement made here on its website on August 5.

The grants impacted include Supporting Grassroots Music grant applications.

As the collective voice of the UK music industry, UK Music is keen to hear how the suspension of grants has impacted our sector. Your views will help us press the case for the right support from Arts Council England.

Please help us make the case on your behalf by filling in this short survey. You can give us your views by filling in the survey here by 5pm Monday August 25.

Please complete the survey and do share the survey with colleagues who may also have been impacted by the grants suspension.

Explaining the reasons for the disruption, Arts Council England said on its website: “On 23 July, Grantium stopped functioning at the same time as we experienced an expected surge in log-ins from applicants seeking results of their Developing Your Creative Practice applications. Our digital team immediately began work to identify the issues and restore the system.

“We commissioned specialist analysts who found no evidence of cybercrime and we’ve identified the nature of the problem: It relates to the inability of Grantium infrastructure to operate with high traffic, when we have needed to apply important system updates.

“We have been able to put solutions in place for payments for everyone and to support applications to smaller scale programmes, but it will take a few weeks longer to offer a route for NLPG applicants.”