National Lottery Heritage Fund reopens project grants of up to £5m

Project grants up to £5million can once more be applied for from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. In March 2020 The National Lottery Heritage Fund halted new project funding as it focused on supporting heritage across the UK survive and recover from the impact of Covid-19. Its £50 million Heritage Emergency Fund has supported more than 950 organisations across the UK. In November 2020 applications for projects between £3,000 to £100,000 reopened and from today, applications are once again open for funding awards from £3,000 up to £5million. Ros Kerslake, CEO of The National Lottery Heritage Fund said: “Heritage has an essential role to play in making communities better places to live, creating economic prosperity and supporting personal wellbeing. All of these are going to be vitally important as we build back from the current pandemic. “During 2020 we focused on supporting heritage across the UK to adapt and respond to the immediate impact of the COVID-19 crisis. By the end of this financial year we will have supported more than 1,500 organisations across the heritage sector with over £500million of National Lottery and Government funding. “Our focus now is to support the heritage sector to strengthen its recovery and to build back for positive change – reopening applications for heritage projects is key to the success of this.” The grants are available for the same, broad range of heritage projects and activities as usual, from industrial heritage and sites, castles and historic places of worship, to the stories and memories of our communities, through to public parks, natural landscapes and native wildlife. However, there is one critical change to be aware of. Between April 2021 and March 2022 when making funding decisions, priority will be given to heritage projects that deliver at least one of the following outcomes: boosting local economies, including job creation improving people’s wellbeing making local areas better place to live, work and visit developing skills, including creating training opportunities improving the resilience of organisations we fund This aims to ensure that the funding provided by National Lottery players will support the wider UK economic and social recovery from the pandemic. Every project must achieve an inclusion outcome: ‘a wider range of people will be involved in heritage’. In addition, all projects will have to demonstrate they are environmentally responsible and are integrating environmental measures. National Lottery Grants for Heritage were introduced in February 2019. Since then, more than 1,000 projects have been funded including £8.3m to Rochdale Town Hall, supporting to the town’s wider regeneration, and £8.75m to Newport Transporter Bridge in South Wales (main image) – one of only eight remaining transporter bridges in the world ­– to repair and preserve the structure of the bridge. Further information, including guidance on how to apply for grants, can be found here.   Main image: Image by Robert Williams from Pixabay 

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