Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund

Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund

Supports England's digital inclusion ambitions with local authority pilots that create accessible innovation for communities.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

The Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund (DIIF) 2025 round is a DSIT-direct programme under the UK Digital Inclusion Action Plan, designed to advance digital participation across England through targeted funding to local and third-sector organisations. The 2025 round allocated a total of £7.278 million across three categories: Category 1 (£2.630 million) for replicating and scaling best practices; Category 2 (£3.380 million) for innovative R&D interventions generating new evidence on what works; and Category 3 (£1.267 million) for physical and intangible assets such as devices and software. Individual grants ranged from £25,000 to £500,000. The application round closed 10 September 2025, and all funded activities concluded by 31 March 2026.

Eligible applicants were required to be based and registered in England; the programme does not cover Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland despite DSIT being a UK-wide department. Eligible organisation types included local authorities, combined authorities, registered charities, and UKRI-eligible research organisations; consortia were permitted with an eligible lead. Private companies were not eligible. Projects targeted five demographic groups — low-income households, older adults (60+), disabled people, unemployed individuals, and young people (25 and under) — across four challenge areas: digital skills, service access, device and data poverty, and confidence-building.

The programme is currently between cycles; a future round is anticipated as part of DSIT's ongoing Digital Inclusion Action Plan, following the Ministerial Group for Digital Inclusion meeting of 21 January 2026. Organisations preparing for a future round should document evidence of need in the target population, articulate a theory of change aligned to the fund's four challenge areas, and demonstrate capacity to deliver within a fixed-term activity window. Category 2 projects in particular require a credible research design for generating transferable evidence on effective interventions.