The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Background

National Lottery Heritage Grants form part of the National Lottery Heritage Fund's new 10-year strategy, Heritage 2033, that aims to invest £3.6 billion across the UK. The strategy is centred around a simplified framework of four investment principles:

• Saving heritage.
• Protecting the environment.
• Inclusion, access and participation.
• Organisational sustainability.

Objectives of Fund

Grants are available to support projects of up to five years that care for and sustain heritage in the UK. This could include nature and habitats, historic buildings and environments, or cultures, traditions and people’s memories.

The programme funds projects that:

• Clearly focus on heritage – this can be national, regional or local heritage of the UK
• Take into account all four investment principles
• Have a clear plan with a defined start, middle and end
• Have not already started
• Can demonstrate the need for National Lottery investment

Value Notes

Two levels of funding are available:

• Grants from £10,000 to £250,000 for projects of no more than five years in duration.
• Grants from £250,000 to £10 million for projects of no more than five years in duration (excluding the development phase).

Match Funding Restrictions

Applicants requesting £250,000 and over must contribute towards the costs of their project. This partnership funding can be made up of cash, non-cash contributions, volunteer time or a combination of all of these.

The following applies:

• For grant requests between £250,000 and £1 million, applicants must provide at least 5% of the costs of the development phase and at least 5% of the costs of the delivery phase as partnership funding.
• For grant requests between £1 million and £10 million, applicants must provide at least 10% of the costs of the development phase and at least 10% of the costs of the delivery phase as partnership funding.

If the project is receiving funding from other National Lottery distributors (for example the Community Fund) this can count as partnership funding, but it cannot count towards the minimum contribution of 5% or 10%.

Who Can Apply

Applications from:

• £10,000 to £100,000 will be accepted from not-for-profit organisations, private owners of heritage and partnerships.
• £100,000 to £10 million will be accepted from not-for-profit organisations and partnerships led by not-for-profit organisations.

As a guide, this includes:

• Charities, trusts and charitable incorporated organisations
• Community and voluntary groups
• Community/parish councils
• Community interest companies
• Faith-based or church organisations
• Local authorities
• Other public sector organisations.
• Private owners of a heritage asset, for example a building, land, object or collection.

Location

UK

Restrictions

The following are not eligible for funding:

• Existing staff posts or organisational costs: unless calculated through full cost recovery which means securing funding for all costs involved in running a project. So applicants can request funding for direct project costs and also for part of their organisation’s overheads.
• Repairs to an applicant's own home.
• Legal and/or statutory responsibilities: includes anything that would be paid for regardless, whether the project went ahead or not. For example, rent, utilities, building maintenance, unless the applicant has a heritage enterprise grant.
• Promoting the causes or beliefs of political or faith organisations.
• Recoverable VAT.
• Costs for any activity that has taken place before a grant is awarded.
• Costs for installing artificial grass or plants.
• Sellers' fees (for example, legal and agents' fees) when purchasing buildings, land or heritage items.

Eligible Expenditure

Project funding to support a broad range of heritage projects and activities and connect people and communities to the national, regional and local heritage of the UK.

Heritage projects could include:

• Nature – works to improve habitats or conserve species, as well as helping people to connect to nature in their daily lives.
• Designed landscapes – improving and conserving historic landscapes such as public parks, historic gardens and botanical gardens.
• Large-scale rural projects that help improve landscapes for people and nature by, for example, restoring habitats and celebrating the cultural traditions of the land.
• Oral history recordings of people's stories, memories and songs, as a way of communicating and revealing the past.
• Cultural traditions – exploring the history of different cultures through storytelling, or things that people do as part of their community. This could be anything from dance and theatre to food or clothing. It could also include the heritage of languages and dialects.
• Community archaeology – projects that involve the active participation of volunteers in archaeological activities, including investigating, photographing, surveying, excavation and finds processing (sometimes called public archaeology).
• Historic buildings, monuments and the historic environment – from houses and mills to caves and gardens. Areas that are connected to history and heritage.
• Museums, libraries and archives – making the collections that museums, libraries and archives hold more accessible through new displays, the improvement of public buildings and galleries, or through engaging people with interpreting new and existing collections.
• Acquiring new objects – help towards the cost of acquiring one-off objects or collections as part of a collection's development policy.
• Commemorations and celebrations – telling the stories and histories of people, communities, places or events related to specific times and dates.
• Industrial, maritime and transport – places and objects linked to the UK's industrial, maritime and transport history.

Heritage grants can support direct project costs, such as:

• Volunteer expenses, new staff posts and training costs.
• Capital works, repair, maintenance and conservation.
• Professional fees, event costs and activities to strengthen your organisation.
• Acquisition of heritage and costs associated with the purchase.
• Costs to join Fit for the Future, a UK-wide environmental sustainability network.

Eligible costs include:

• Activities: to engage the wider community in heritage. They might include guided heritage walks, sharing oral histories or workshops. Activities should link to the heritage focus of an organisation's project and be tailored to the needs of the people it wants to work with, including any reasonable adjustments that need to be made.
• Repairs and conservation.
• Digital outputs: this could be digital images, sound files or data, a website with heritage material, an app, or a film made using digital technology.
• New staff posts: this could include part of a current employee's role, if they were dedicating a specific amount of time to the project.
• Paid training placements: this could also include training for existing staff, to support the aims of the project.
• Professional fees: includes anyone related to the project in a professional capacity, from architects and heritage professionals to teaching staff.

Funding can also be used for the purchase of land and/or buildings that are important to the UK's heritage and are for sale at or below market value. The principal reasons for the proposed purchase must be a benefit to the long-term management of heritage and for public access.

Grants will only be available to buy buildings, land or heritage items if applicants demonstrate that:

• Risks to the preservation of the buildings, land or heritage items will be reduced if the purchase is successful.
• The price accurately reflects the condition and value of the heritage asset(s).
• The heritage asset(s) will be accessible to the public once purchased and the purchase will contribute to more people engaging with heritage.
• They have adequate plans for the long-term care and maintenance over a period of at least 10 years after project completion.
• What they wish to purchase is significant to heritage in a local, regional or national sense.

The eligible costs associated with a purchase include:

• The purchase price itself.
• Fees incurred by the organisation as the buyer including valuations, agent’s fees and the buyer’s premium for purchases at auction.
• Unreclaimable VAT.

How To Apply

All relevant document relating to priorities, application guidance, help notes and revised outcomes are available from the NLHF website. Applicants should read these documents before starting the application process.

To apply for a grant, applicants will need to use the application portal on the Heritage Fund website as follows:

• Submit an application at any time for a project idea between £10,000 and £250,000. Applications will be assessed and a decision given in eight weeks. (Applicants may also submit an optional Project Enquiry to get feedback on their project idea before applying.)
• Submit an Expression of Interest at any time for applications over £250,000. Successful applicants will be invited to go through a development and delivery phase.

For applications over £250,000, following a successful EOI submission there are quarterly deadlines for the development and delivery phases. These are noon on:

• 29 February 2024 for a decision by the end of June 2024.
• 30 May 2024 for a decision by the end of September 2024.
• 15 August 2024 for a decision by the end of December 2024.
• 21 November 2024 for a decision by the end of March 2025.

Applicants can contact either the main Customer Services team or their local office, a full list of local contacts can be found on the fund pages on the NLHF website.