2 Checking in new applications

This chapter covers the steps involved in receiving and registering new applications as they are received in offices, as well as procedures for allocating applications to individual members of staff.

Please note that throughout this process AMI will generate letters to applicants acknowledging applications or advising of transfers. It is important for you to ensure that someone will be responsible for generating all the letters every day.

Receipt

Completed applications are received directly at NLCB offices. The application pack provides details of how to select the relevant office, but some are likely to have been sent to the wrong one.

Unless otherwise specified under the rules of a specific programme, there is no deadline for the receipt of applications. Applications may be delivered by post or by hand during normal office hours.

You should ensure as far as possible that you don. t open applications until you are ready to enter them onto AMI. This is to ensure that we keep a proper audit trail of when applications are received, what is enclosed and how we deal with them. Although it is likely that some applications will be opened along with general post as it arrives in the office, you should try to ensure that any likely applications are dealt with separately and systematically.

You should work through all the following steps each time you register a new application. If you leave AMI before a URN has been generated your work will be lost. Similarly, leaving application forms and enclosures unattended before they have been registered is inconsistent with audit and customer care requirements.

1. Clear a space on your desk so that you will not confuse the contents of envelopes with anything else. You should only have one envelope on the desk at any time.
2. If it has not been opened, slit the envelope across the top and down one side. Remove all enclosures. Check that the envelope is empty and discard it.
3. Date stamp the application form and all enclosures.
4. Check that the information we require for the completed form to constitute an application has been enclosed. Section 2.2 tells you what we need and what you should do if the necessary details do not appear to have been provided. Please note that you must record the arrival of forms that don. t constitute applications: you should refer to local guidance on how this is done in your office.
5. Record the name of the organisation and contact details on AMI. The system will enter the date automatically. Follow the initial data capture procedures described in section 2.3 so that the system will provide the application with a URN.
6. Make sure that you have recorded the URN on all enclosures. Please also note that you must initial anything that you write on application forms or enclosures.
7. Check that the application is in the right office and that it contains all the information we require to assess it. Follow the procedures for transfers and incomplete applications outlined in sections 2.4 and 2.5 if necessary.
8. Put the application form and all enclosures into a wallet. Make sure that the URN and the organisation name are on the front of the wallet.

If you have worked through all of these steps you will now be ready to complete data capture.

Is it an application?

It is always essential to make an initial check to ensure that a completed application form does in fact meet the basic conditions we require for it to be considered as an application. In order to do so, the form must include the following:

• the name of the organisation,
• a contact address (with enough information for a postcode to be generated by the system),
• the amount of money being requested,
• what the project is, and
• the signatures of the primary contact, the senior contact and the referee (who must be three different people).

Please note that the application must also be made on the correct application form, or on an agreed alternative format. (See "Applications in other formats" for further details of dealing with requests and enquiries about such formats).

If the postcode is missing you should enter part of the address to see if the postcode will be automatically generated by the system. If no postcode appears, you should contact the applicant (or if that is not possible, the referee) to find out what the postcode is. If you have to do so, please explain to the applicant that you are simply registering the application on the system so that assessment can be carried out. Do not discuss the application any further. If you are unable to contact the applicant by any of these means, you should refer the matter to your manager. You will not be able to complete initial data capture unless you have entered a valid postcode.

The absence of any of the other items means that the form cannot be accepted as an application. If this happens, you should return the full application form and all enclosures to the applicant, along with a standard covering letter that outlines what further information we will have to receive before we can accept the application as such. You should follow local guidance on how such correspondence is managed, but all such procedures will involve recording basic details provided, keeping a copy of the letter that you send to the organisation, and recording dates of receipt and return of the form and all enclosures to the applicant.

Please note that your office should take responsibility for this step even if it appears that the application has been sent to the wrong office. This is to ensure that a proper audit record is maintained and that decisions are not made about who will process an application before the necessary information has been provided.

Initial data capture

If the form and enclosures meet the minimum requirements to be accepted as an application, you should now complete the initial data capture on AMI. This enters some basic details of the application and will allow a unique reference number (URN) to be allocated to it. Remember:

• You must complete initial data capture even if it appears that the application should be transferred to another office.
• If you leave the system before a URN has been allocated all data will be lost.
• Information must be entered according to the naming conventions discussed in this section.

You must enter the following information at this stage:

1. Contact address

Enter the full postcode, which should be enough to provide most of the rest of the address. Using this new feature should help to help prevent spelling errors and speed up data capture. The following main conventions apply:

• You should try to fit addresses as far as possible to the fields provided.
• Do not put commas or full stops at the end of any lines.
• Floor numbers should be entered as "Ground Floor", "1st Floor" and so on.
• Write "Road" and "Street" and so on in full.
• Do not put commas after street numbers.
• Enter the full postcode, with one space between the two sections. Pay close attention to getting it right as doing so will save a great deal of work later.
• If there are too many lines of the address to fit into the fields available, you may combine lines and use commas to separate them. But you must enter the postcode in a field of its own.

2. Organisation name and alias

You must enter the group. s correct name, but you also have the opportunity to add an alias or an acronym (such as RNLI). Organisation names and acronyms should be entered in full. Letters must be capitalised as in the normal representation for the name. For example:

Royal National Institute for the Blind

Citizens Advice Bureau

For groups such as the Scout Movement that are identified by numbers, you should enter an ordinal number followed by the name of the relevant local area in parentheses. If necessary, use a hyphen to separate ordinals. For example:

1030th (Whitehaven) Squadron Air Training Corps

1st-2nd Parkeston Scout Group

You may enter the initials of the organisation as a set of initials if you don't know the full name or if the organisation is known by its initials. Do not include any full stops.

When you enter a name, the system will compare it and the postcode with the central database and may offer you a list of possible matches. This is to help track the relationship between this and any previous applications, as well as to ensure that further duplicates do not appear in the database.

• If the applicant is shown on the list, select the name.
• If the applicant is not shown on the list and there is no reason to believe that it should, select "None of the above".
• If the applicant is not shown on the list but you believe that they should be, check with colleagues and your manager, and then ring the helpdesk if the situation has not been resolved.

Contact name and position

Enter the name and position (such as "Chair") of the main contact for the application. Use the prompts on AMI to help you. If the applicant has indicated that they are a branch of a larger organisation (see QA1), go to the "Organisation Parent" tab and enter the name of the parent. Once again, AMI will try to match this against names held in the database. Follow local procedures to ensure that the person undertaking first assessment knows that this is a branch application.

3. Application form details

Unique reference number (URN)

The system will now allocate a unique reference number (URN) to the application. This is a 6-digit number prefixed with two letters. The two letters identify the programme, while the number identifies the application within that programme. This number should be recorded on the wallet, the application form and on all enclosures.

Naming conventions

In order to be able to compare and sort applications and information, it is essential for you to enter addresses and other data in an agreed format. As long as you enter the postcode correctly, most address fields will be generated automatically.

The following table presents the standard way of entering information in specific fields.

Permitted abbreviations

For further information about naming conventions, please refer to the intranet.

Transferring applications between offices

Once the URN has been allocated you should check the application to ensure that it has arrived at the right office. To do this, you should refer to the questions on the application form about the location of the beneficiaries (question C9) and whether this tallies with the information provided about the project (question C2).

If it is still not clear you may have to contact the applicant for further information. But if you do this make sure that you explain that you are calling simply to determine which office should deal with the application. Unless you do so applicants may think that this is the assessment interview. In order to ensure consistency, you should also discuss your intention with your manager before you call the applicant.

Rules for determining the right office

English regions

If 75% or more of beneficiaries are located in a region, that region should process the application. If less than 75% of beneficiaries are located in one region, the application should be processed by England-wide. In some cases, very large projects with many beneficiaries located outside one region might best be classed as England-wide. In these exceptional cases you should consult the England Grants Manager to discuss the matter.

UK applications

The UK office processes applications where beneficiaries are located in all four countries. The applicant must demonstrate the UK-wide nature of the project, giving evidence of the strategy developed to achieve and monitor the project across all four countries (see question C9). You should consider:

• the statistics provided about location of beneficiaries and how they were derived
• what consultation the applicant undertook to assess need in each of the four countries
• the applicant. s strategy for delivering the project in all four countries.

You should contact a member of the UK team if you still have any doubts.

Multi-country applications

If the project works across England and one or two other countries, the application should be processed by the UK office unless more than 85% of beneficiaries live in England, in which case it should be sent to the England office. You should discuss the case with colleagues in the offices concerned before transferring the application.

If the application you are dealing with fits none of the above categories, refer the matter to your manager.

Transfer procedures

1. Identify applications in the wrong office and determine the right destinations.
2. Enter sufficient data to have a URN allocated. This will allow the application to be tracked across offices.
3. Contact the Transfer Representative at the destination office and get agreement in principle to the transfer. You may have to provide further information to get this agreement.
4. Choose "Transfer" from the drop-down menu in AMI. Choose the office and enter the reason for the transfer in the text field. Click OK. This will remove the application from your office. s work list and generate two copies of a printed transfer report.
5. Post the application and a transfer report to the destination office. Keep the other copy of the transfer report on file for audit purposes.

When the destination office receives the application it will decide whether to accept it. The application appears on the new office. s work list as "Awaiting transfer in". If you are working in an office receiving a transfer request and you wish to accept the application, you should click on "Transfer in" and carry on processing the application as normal. If not, you should transfer it in anyway and then follow the procedures outlined above.

It is important that offices should speak to each other to resolve any differences of opinion instead of sending applications back and forth.

If you realise that you have transferred an application in error, you should contact the other office immediately and ask them to check in the application and transfer it back immediately. Please also note that the system will generate a letter to the applicant from the office that accepts the transfer. Make sure that you or another member of staff generates these letters every day.

Incomplete applications

Once a URN is allocated and the application is in the right office, you should examine the application to ensure that it is complete. This is different from the process discussed in section 2.2 as it refers to applications which meet the minimum criteria to be registered, but which lack sufficient information for assessment to begin. The computer system will generate a list specific to the programme that the application is being made under, but in general you should ask yourself the following:

• Is the constitution enclosed?
• Has the constitution been adopted and/or signed?
• Are the accounts enclosed?
• Is the date on the accounts within the relevant time period?
• Have the accounts been signed?
• Is the business plan enclosed (for applications where the total project cost � in question C19 � is �200,000 or more)?
• Is the insert that explains how the application meets the programme criterion (the reply to question C4) enclosed, and has it been completed?
• If the application relates to a consortium, have all relevant details been enclosed (a copy of the constitution of the consortium and of each of the members AND a copy of the "consortium application" questionnaire from section 7 of the guide which has been completed and signed on each page by each member organisation)?
• If the application requests funding for more than one new job, have copies of replies to question C20 been included for each post?

Please note that applications from dependent branches will be dealt with in first assessment rather than at this stage.

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you should choose the "incomplete" option from the drop-down menu and select the reason(s) selected from the pick list. The system will now generate a letter that asks the applicant to return the missing information within 21 days. Please make sure that the letter is printed and sent out on the same day. Do not return the application at this stage, although if sheets need to be signed and dated, you should photocopy them. The application will have a status of "Incomplete" on AMI and will not be added to anyone�s work list. You can however call the record up from the "Application Status" screen.

When you receive the enclosures, go into AMI and call up the record. The system will take you straight to the "incomplete screen", where you can click off the items you have received. If there are still some missing, you can generate a new letter.

When all enclosures have been received you should complete data capture as described in section 2.6.

If the applicant does not provide the information in the time specified in the letter, you should complete data capture as far as you can and then allocate the application to another member of grants staff for first assessment.

Completing data capture

When you are satisfied that you have received all relevant enclosures and that the application is in the correct office, the system moves on to further data capture. You should enter information from the form over a series of screens. Please note that once the system has generated a URN you can interrupt the process at any point. When you return to it the system will take you to the last complete screen. You should ensure that you have entered the following information into the system before you complete check-in (the items marked with an asterisk being essential for the application to register on AMI):

• Programme
• Primary contact postcode*
• Primary contact address*
• Address classifier*
• Organisation name*
• Organisation alias
• Parent�s name (if applicable)
• Primary contact name (title or first name and surname)*
• Primary contact telephone number*
• Date form sent
• Date received*
• Despatch method*
• Despatch number
• Communication needs of applicant
• Language of applicant
• Charitable status
• Charity registration number (if applicable)
• Organisation start date
• Management committee numbers
• Number of staff and volunteers currently employed
• Bank details
• Financial year end date
• Annual income and expenditure
• Free reserves
• Cost of project (capital and revenue)
• Amounts requested by year (capital and revenue)
• Referee details (includes surname, address and postcode)
• Senior officer details (includes surname, address and postcode)
• Consortium details (the organisational fields listed above for each member).

Please also note that you can complete further coding at this stage or later in assessment. Different staff and different offices will make their own arrangements about how this is done. If you do continue coding at this stage, however, all codes should be reviewed in the light of more detailed investigation during first and full assessment.

Allocating applications to grants staff

The final stage of checking in an application is to allocate it to a specific member of staff (usually a grants officer) who will assess it. The first stage of this process is to consider whether it should be included in a custom set.

Custom sets

Custom sets are groups of applications that share common characteristics, such as location or type of service. The development of custom sets enables staff to compare similar applications. Custom sets are determined locally, so you should refer to your manager or other local guidance about them. If you decide to include an allocation in a custom set you should then allocate it to one of the staff members responsible for that custom set. Please note that although custom sets are essentially a matter for local guidance, they should be designed in such a way that they can contribute effectively to comparative judgement and overview assessment, as described in chapter 7.

Further points on allocating applications

If the application does not appear to fit into a custom set you should choose a member of grants staff from those available. But whenever you are going to allocate an application . whether as part of a custom set or not . you must check any conflict of interest declarations made by that member of staff. You must not allocate an application from an organisation to a member of staff who has declared a conflict of interest in that organisation.

The application is now ready for first assessment and you should follow local procedures to ensure that the wallet is passed to the staff member who will undertake first assessment.