The National Lottery Heritage Fund has today announced that the upper limit of its grants for heritage projects will be doubled from £5m to £10m.
The announcement has been made as the organisation said it acknowledged the former £5m grant threshold, which had been in place for over 20 years, was limiting opportunities for some larger initiatives.
The move is one of the changes being made this year as part of its new 10-year strategy, Heritage 2033. Earlier this year, Eilish McGuiness, Chief Executive of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, wrote a detailed vision of the strategy for Advisor.
Eilish McGuinness talks 10-year NLHF strategy ‘Heritage 2033’
On the increase of the upper limit in its grants, McGuinness said: “We want to support the best, most ambitious and innovative heritage projects across the UK. We know that inflation and the cost of living crisis is making that difficult under our current threshold.
“Increasing our grants to £10m means we can support projects which have greater scale and reach, and deliver our vision for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone’s future.”
McGuinness also said there would be consideration for investment above the £10m threshold for “truly exceptional heritage projects.”
The organisation wrote that the increase in project funding is hoped to allow for “more ambitious heritage projects”.
It said the application and decision-making process remains the same, and applications sent to the National Lottery Heritage Fund this year will be assessed on the criteria of its current Strategic Funding Framework 2019-2024.
It added that, given the expected timelines involved in developing large-scale projects, it will now ask applicants to provide supporting documents detailing how a project meets its new Heritage 2033 investment principles: saving heritage; protecting the environment; inclusion, access and participation; and organisational sustainability.
More details are available via the National Lottery Heritage Fund website.
