On 19 February 2026, the Home Office confirmed that a record £73.4 million in protective security funding will be available to UK faith sites in the 2026/27 financial year. The package consolidates three separate schemes covering Jewish, Muslim, and other faith communities, and pays for both physical security measures and on-site guarding.
For faith leaders, school administrators, and trustees who have spent the last eighteen months absorbing rising threat levels, the headline matters — but the detail matters more. Below is a plain-English breakdown of who qualifies, what the money can be spent on, and how to plan an application that stands up to scrutiny.
The three schemes at a glance
The £73.4 million is not a single pot. It is split across three established Home Office schemes, each with its own eligibility rules and delivery partner.
Jewish Community Protective Security Grant (JCPS) — up to £28.4 million. Administered on behalf of the Home Office by the Community Security Trust (CST), this grant supports synagogues, Jewish schools, nurseries, and community centres. It funds on-site security personnel as well as physical measures.
Protective Security for Mosques Scheme — up to £40 million. The largest of the three pots, this scheme supports mosques, Muslim faith schools, and Muslim community centres. It also covers both guarding and physical security infrastructure.
Places of Worship Protective Security Scheme — up to £5 million. Following a £1.5 million uplift, this scheme brings the total available to its highest level to date. It supports Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and other faith sites that fall outside the JCPS and Mosques Scheme criteria.
Together, the three schemes are described by the Home Office as the largest single-year protective security commitment to UK faith communities on record, building on a £10 million uplift announced in October 2025.
What the funding can be spent on
The Home Office has been consistent on the eligible spend categories across the schemes. In broad terms, applicants can use grant money for:
- On-site security staff, including SIA-licensed guarding during services, school hours, or community events.
- CCTV systems — installation, upgrades, and integration with monitored alarm receiving centres.
- Perimeter measures such as fencing, gates, anti-ram bollards, and reinforced doors.
- Intruder alarms and panic alarms, including links to police response.
- Floodlighting and other access-control hardening.
The schemes do not typically fund routine maintenance, day-to-day operating costs, or works unrelated to a documented threat or vulnerability. Applicants should expect to evidence both the threat picture and the protective security measure proposed in response.
Eligibility and the application window
Applications run on a rolling basis. The Home Office has indicated that the next application window for the 2026/27 round will open later in 2026, with the exact date to be confirmed via gov.uk and the relevant delivery partner.
For JCPS, the gateway is the Community Security Trust. For the Mosques Scheme and the Places of Worship Scheme, applications run directly through the Home Office. Eligibility hinges on the site being a registered faith venue or affiliated community institution, and on evidence of vulnerability — typically supported by hate crime statistics, prior incidents, or police threat assessments specific to the area.
What this means for faith sites and faith schools
From our perspective as a security operator working with corporate, school, and community-site clients across London, three practical points stand out.
Strong applications start with a current risk assessment. A grant panel reviewing dozens of applications looks for clarity on the specific threat, the specific control proposed, and the residual risk that remains. A site-specific risk assessment, ideally informed by recent local incident data and a walkaround by an experienced security professional, is the foundation of a competitive bid.
Guarding and technology should be planned together, not separately. A CCTV system without a monitoring or response protocol delivers far less value than the same system tied to an SIA-licensed guard or alarm receiving centre. Schemes increasingly reward integrated proposals where physical measures, technology, and human response work as one layered system.
The grant is not the whole budget. Even at record levels, demand is expected to exceed supply, and timing of awards may not align with when a site needs to act. Many of our school and corporate clients use the grant to fund capital measures (CCTV, fencing, access control) while planning guarding separately on an operating budget — a model that tends to weather application timing risk.
Need a security review?
Our team works with synagogues, churches, mosques, faith schools, and community centres across London on protective security planning — including the threat and vulnerability documentation that underpins a competitive Home Office grant application. If your site is considering applying for funding in the 2026/27 window, we can help you scope the work and present it credibly.
Call us on 020 3700 0967, email info@secureonsitesecurity.co.uk, or visit our contact page to arrange a confidential site review. You can also read more about our school security and corporate security services.
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