To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what percentage of responses to concept notes submitted to his Department were delayed in each of the last five years. (135627)

DFID does not keep a central record of the response rates achieved under the various funding schemes run across the Department. Information for two of the largest current schemes is as follows:

Civil Society Challenge Fund (CSCF)

UK-based civil society organisations seeking support are required to submit a two-page concept note any time between 1 February and 15 June each year. These concept notes are registered by the Civil Society Team in DFID. An acknowledgment is then sent to the applicant within three days of receipt, and the concept note is passed to our external contracted evaluation team.

Our guidelines state that any applicant submitting a CSCF concept note can expect a decision within four weeks of our acknowledgement of receipt. Over the past five years, our contractors have been unable to meet this deadline in fewer than 6 per cent. of cases, i.e. for 69 out of 1216 concept notes:

Conflict and Humanitarian Fund

This fund has only been running for three years. Applications may be submitted either for Unearmarked (also known as Programmatic) funding or for Project funding. For Project funding there is a two-stage process under which applicants submit a short concept note and are then informed whether their application has been rejected or shortlisted for further consideration.

The figures for delays in informing applicants whether their concept notes had been shortlisted are as follows: