Worthing CIL Neighbourhood Fund - Adur & Worthing Councils

2026 funding round

Adur & Worthing Councils are streamlining our grants process to make applications simpler and less time-consuming for community groups. From this year four grants - the Adur Community Grant, Community Transport Grant, Worthing Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Neighbourhood Fund and income from textile recycling in Adur - will now be pooled into one pot of money with one application form, one set of funding criteria and a consistent assessment process.

Pooling the grants will provide greater flexibility to support areas where there may be less access to funding in a particular year, as can be the case with the CIL Neighbourhood Fund, and ensure that local groups in both Adur and Worthing have fairer access to funding that is tailored to the needs of each neighbourhood.

For more information on the 2026 'Connected Communities Grant', which includes the CIL Neighbourhood Fund money, please see:

Connected Communities Grant Fund

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What can the CIL Neighbourhood Fund be used for?

15% of all CIL funds received by Worthing Borough Council are to be spent in the neighbourhood where the development took place (known as the 'Neighbourhood Fund').

In accordance with the Government's CIL Regulations the CIL Neighbourhood Fund should be used to support local projects which entail:

the provision, improvement, replacement, operation or maintenance of infrastructure; or
anything else that is concerned with addressing the demands that development places on an area

The opportunity with this fund is the "demand that the development places on an area". This gives communities freedom and power to spend the money on a wide range of things, in consultation with the local residents. Local project proposals seeking support from the CIL Neighbourhood Fund, can therefore cover a broad range of project types, by using the opportunities that local development brings to an area.

These funds will now form part of the wider:

Connected Communities Grant Fund

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How will neighbourhoods be defined?

In the absence of parishes and neighbourhood plans, which is the case in Worthing, the CIL Regulations allow the council to design its own bespoke definition of what constitutes a local neighbourhood area for the purpose of allocating the CIL Neighbourhood Fund.

The CIL Neighbourhood funding is allocated based on 'CIL areas' (groupings of wards) where the development takes place.

The aggregated groups of Wards which form the Worthing 'CIL areas' are set out below:

Coastal East: Heene, Central and Selden
Coastal West: Marine and Goring
North West: Northbrook, Castle and Durrington
North: Tarring, Gaisford and Salvington
North East: Broadwater and Offington

Note that the Worthing CIL areas exclude any area covered by the South Downs National Park Authority.

See also the interactive map showing the CIL areas listed above, as well as the locations of the projects which have previously been allocated CIL funding:

Worthing CIL Neighbourhood Map

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Previously successful projects

A total of 53 applications were received in 2025 for the fourth round of CIL funding. The council was delighted to see the range of projects highlighted by applicants. Of the applications received, a total of 40 were allocated CIL funding, based on the evaluation of the assessment panels. This will result in a total of almost £145,000 of CIL Neighbourhood Funding being given to the community and voluntary sector in Worthing to help fund some brilliant projects.

The Worthing CIL Neighbourhood Fund Progress Report gives a summary of each of the successful applications who have been granted funding and provides an update as to the progress of the project: