Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund winning schemes announced
HM Government announced today the schemes that will receive funding as part of the Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund. The government’s website also includes a full list of the schemes.
The Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund (DIIF) is a pot of £11.7 million that the government has created to promote new digital inclusion schemes as part of the effort to close the digital divide, a divide that continues to see 8 million adults in the UK lack basic digital skills and 1.6 million live completely offline. The DIIF was announced in the Digital Inclusion Action Plan in February 2025, and portions of the fund have been allocated to the devolved governments in Scotland, who will receive £764,020, Wales, which receives £400,368, and Northern Ireland, which has £267,249.
Being digitally excluded does not just mean people are unable to get online, but they are also excluded from essential public services that are increasingly online, including the NHS App. They are also excluded from online shopping, price comparison sites and more. On average, people without internet access pay 25% more on average for the same goods and services than consumers who are online.
The DIIF has focused on around eighty schemes designed to provide tangible support. Some of these include helping participants with a specific task or purpose to focus any inclusion support and show the potential of delivery. These include a project run by Age UK to help up to 7000 older people to learn how to use the NHS app to manage health matters, helping to improve their physical and digital health at the same time. This also includes Sheffield United’s Community Foundation, which will trial using e-sports video gaming to help 400 young people build digital skills and confidence, and raise awareness on being safe online.
Other schemes focus on innovation in the delivery of digital inclusion. The University of Bristol’s Future IDEAS project will allow digitally excluded members of the community and digital design experts to co-create a chat bot that will understand the needs and capabilities of the people it is built to support. Alongside this, ‘AI.Can’ is a peer-led pilot designed to find ‘what works’ when building skills to use existing AI tools that make life easier for people with learning disabilities and autism.
techUK partners FutureDotNow also received £156,945 for an Essential Digital Skills and AI Employability Pilot in the South West of England, which aims to support unemployed people with essential digital and AI skills to help them into work, as well as developing a scalable toolkit to improve digital inclusion and job readiness.
All of the projects will be delivered by community organisations across the UK, who will report back on findings and progress to shape future inclusion projects.
When the DIIF was first announced in February 2025, we were concerned by the lack of figure for the final amount. We are therefore delighted to see that the government has followed through on this spending. techUK and our members are deeply committed to eliminating the digital divide for good and ensuring everybody in the UK has the capability and freedom to use the internet with confidence whenever they wish.
We are keen to see how the schemes backed by this funding unfold, especially where they present new ways to promote digital inclusion. We also look forward to seeing the most effective projects given full financial backing from the government alongside the government’s current efforts to tackle the digital divide.
techUK members interested in the Digital Inclusion can join our Digital Inclusion Working Group to receive regular updates and get involved with our work.
