The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has offered some additional good news to the sector for Christmas.
Heritage Alliance writes
The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has announced an increased budget for new awards in 2012-13 of £375m. This budget represents an increase of £120m over its 2011-2012 budget, and is made possible by the increase in the heritage share of good cause income to 20 per cent effective from 1 April 2012, and continuing record ticket sales.
A number of other changes will also be introduced, in response to feedback from HLF’s recent consultation on its 2013-19 Strategic Plan, which will be launched in May 2012. Finalised budgets for 2012-2013 will be announced in the spring, but at present HLF expects its increased budget will be allocated as follows: Heritage Grants (awards over £50,000) will have a total budget of £255m, including at least £50m for Major Batch projects (grants over £5m); the Parks for People budget will be £24m across the UK, plus an additional £5m investment from Big Lottery Fund for parks in England; the Landscape Partnerships budget will be £22m; the Townscape Heritage Initiative budget will be £14m, with an additional application round in 2012 for decision in March 2013; the Repair Grants for Places of Worship budget will be £30m across the UK; the Your Heritage budget will be £26m (note that grants will be available up to £100,000 from April); and the Young Roots budget (for heritage projects led by young people) will be £4m (note that grants will be available up to £50,000 from April). HLF will announce a further strategic investment in skills in 2012-2013 – details to be confirmed.
Further detail about the Strategic Plan 2013-19 will be announced in May 2012. However, HLF has said that in response to consultation feedback, from April 2012 committees will take local decisions on more Heritage Grants applications (up to the value of £2m – currently £1m); the upper limit for Your Heritage grants will be increased to £100,000 (from £50,000); the upper limit for Young Roots grants will be increased to £50,000 (from £25,000), and it will also support projects engaging a wider age range of young people (from 11 – 25 years old) and the maximum length of a project will be increased to two years. HLF will also introduce single stage Heritage Grants applications by exception when there is an urgent external deadline, for example on partnership funding.
