Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
TUESDAY 18 APRIL 2006
HERITAGE LOTTERY
FUND
Q240 Philip Davies: You mentioned
that local views are important and were a condition—I think
you said—of funding. Is there a conflict of interest between
widening local public opinion and also maintaining the excellence?
Is there a danger that important things that perhaps the public
do not appreciate at the moment are important but may do later
could get lost if we widen it too much to public opinion? Where
do you draw the balance between those two potentially competing
factors?
Dame Liz Forgan: I think sometimes
experts fear that but I think our experience is that if you engage
amateurs/local people/non-experts in a discussion about heritage
for more than about 30 seconds you quite quickly arrive at an
extremely sophisticated view of the subject. If you ask people
off the top of their heads, "Should we keep this old building
or should we have a hospital" it is quite clear they will
say, "Sweep away the old buildings, give us hospitals".
If you sit and talk a little bit longer, as we have done for instance
with citizens juries and as we do with individual projects, people
understand perfectly well the value of the past. They understand
perfectly well the issues involved in choosing what you should
keep from the past and what you must destroy in order to rebuild.
We have had the most sophisticated conversations on this subject
with people who would not begin to describe themselves as experts
in the heritage. We do not think there is a conflict.
Q241 Philip Davies: Could you explain
to me what the mechanism is for getting the public opinion for
doing it? Presumably, from what you have just said, you would
not be in favour of a local paper going and asking people on the
street what they think we should support and what we should not
support but something more in-depth, so what do you have in mind?
Ms Souter: We have used a whole
range of techniques for engaging public opinion and that begins
at our planning process, so we are in the process of developing
our next strategic plan. We issued 5,000 copies of a pre-consultation
document asking people what they thought about what we have done
so far and what we were thinking of doing for the future. We had
nearly 350 responses, including a lot of membership organisations
who speak on behalf of millions of members. At one end of the
process we involve consultation in all of our planning, at the
other end of the process in terms of decision making we have,
throughout all of the English regions, and Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland, committees which take decisions between £50,000
and £2 million. Those committees are made up of local people.
We advertise in the press and we get a whole range of responses
from people who want to be involved so the decision-making involves
local people with local knowledge. In terms of what we ask of
applicants, we ask them to demonstrate the support for their projects,
the need for their projects and how they are going to involve
people in those projects. Every application involves people saying,
"This is why we know this park, for example, would be a popular
project. This is how we are going to involve friends of the park",
that sort of thing. Then we also ask people to think about how
they could use volunteers, for example, how they could improve
skills. In terms of priority setting, which is one of the things
that has been an important area for us, we do look at planning
consultation but we have run some very detailed—as Liz said—citizens
jury type events. If I take an example, we worked with the Arts
Council in the Thames Gateway to talk to young people about what
they would like to see in the communities that are being created
in the Thames Gateway and they had some very clear views about
needing to keep things from the past as well as develop things
for the future. At the project level we ask the applicant to show
us details of how the public are going to be involved, at the
decision level we have local people with local knowledge and expertise
taking decisions, and at the strategic level we have widespread
consultation and involvement.
Q242 Philip Davies: Are you confident
that this does get through to real local public opinion or is
this just experts in the local area? You are breaking through
the expert barrier.
Ms Souter: Yes. I think we have
got a lot of evidence that it does involve widespread groups of
people. For example, if I stick with parks for a moment, because
I think they are quite a good example, a big parks project will
often generate very strong emotions and very strong feelings from
the local population, people want to see this and do not want
to see that, and a very strong engagement in the discussion about
how the project should proceed. We also know that it has lots
of spin-offs and benefits which were not anticipated at the beginning
of the project. I am thinking of Lister Park in Bradford, for
example, where on one day that I visited there were large numbers
of Asian ladies out walking. It was not organised, it had not
been part of the project proposal but because the park was now
a safer, more open, more engaging sort of place it was bringing
in groups of people to use its facilities that had not been involved
before. I am sure those folk would not see themselves as experts
in any sense but they had seen a role and they had taken advantage
of what was provided. I think we will see that again and again
throughout the projects that we support.
Q243 Paul Farrelly: I entirely agree
with you having spent a great deal of my time over the last year
or so engaging on planning and conservation issues with local
people when they are engaged, particularly on planning applications.
I would not call it sophisticated but they come out with a great
deal of common sense about what needs to be done to protect the
heritage of the area. In my experience it is the planning officers
for various reasons who are the philistines, if that is not giving
philistines too bad a name, and indeed so-called conservation
officers such as we still have in many local authorities such
as mine. There are great needs that we will be concentrating on
in the report in these areas which are partly mainstream local
government and government funding, getting the proper staffing
expertise. In terms of your remit, are there any needs which you
see that the sector has which you would like to address whilst
keeping the Heritage Lottery Fund as a focus body which you are
prevented from doing so under the directions that you currently
have? Is there any part of your remit which could make you and
your contribution more effective?
Dame Liz Forgan: We are primarily
grant givers, that is our skill, and we are good at it. However,
I think it would be a failure to dispense over £3 billion
worth of grants without taking some cognisance of the strategic
impact of that investment and therefore having a broad view about
what the strategic application ought to be. We are very careful
to stay out of the way of the strategic bodies that are set up
by statute to do that job. There is no service to anybody from
us tracking over other people's responsibilities, so we are careful
about that separation. It is of course true that we have set out
on a path which has a clear view about how this money ought to
have an impact, and I tried to outline it in my answer to the
first question. We do not think of the heritage as something separate
that you do on sunny weekends when you have some time and money
to spare. We think of it as the blood and guts of the mental health
of our society. We think of it as what constitutes the extraordinary
distinctiveness of Britain. We think of it as the key to the identity
of the people of these islands, past and future. For us it is
a very big deal and thoughts about the heritage ought to inform
decisions about planning and political development of all sorts.
Therefore, we will engage with anybody who will talk to us and
we will go and beat at the door of people with responsibility
for things that do not sound like heritage like planning and say,
"Think of us as an asset not as an obstacle." That approach
sometimes gets a very receptive hearing and sometimes it does
not. If you ask us what we would really like the good fairy to
give us in future, it would not be more powers to intervene, we
seek to persuade—admittedly having money to dispense helps
with the persuasion—not to have powers. I think if you asked
us what single thing would help the heritage in terms of what
might be done structurally with local government, I think despite
the slight hint that conservation officers were not your idea
of a perfect solution, we think that it would be extremely helpful
to have a properly resourced proper status network of conservation
officers as a focus in local government where people could go
for advice, where all the different functions of local government
could have an easy reference point to heritage issues. That is
asking rather a lot but I think that would be a very helpful thing
in terms of bringing heritage to the centre of the hard work of
local government and making a place a focus where people get proper
reliable advice.
Q244 Paul Farrelly: You touch on
an issue which is very close to my heart here, and actually we
do not have a conservation officer in my borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme
anymore. I do not think the last one was much missed either, quite
frankly. I think we will be very strongly in favour of trying
to get more training and a better supply of professionals but
also, touching on the point you have just raised, I am a patron
of an organisation called Urban Vision in North Staffordshire
which is trying to get people to think about good design and heritage
and conservation altogether because they belong together. That
was a CABE seed funded body and it has been partnered by people
in the regeneration zone, English Heritage are not in there but
I may yet approach them for some money. Is that organisation,
which is not a time limited project, the sort of organisation
within your direction which you could help to fund now or by virtue
of its other partners is that something that you could not touch
under your remit?
Ms Souter: The other partners
thing is not an issue at all. We look for the broadest possible
partnerships and encourage applicants to engage as many people
as they can in support of funding. We are a project-based organisation
and that is a requirement in our directions that we are looking
at projects. I think it is probably important in terms of the
additionality question . Once we reach a point at which we are
being looked to for on-going support for core costs, for example,
I think it then becomes much more difficult to demonstrate as
a lottery funder that we are providing extras. It also, over time,
means that a larger proportion perhaps of our funding would simply
be going on day-to-day running costs. That said, of course, an
organisation of the kind that you are talking about might well
want to run projects. We can fund, for example, education officer
posts, community liaison posts over the period of time that the
project runs and I think that is often very helpful for people
in establishing those sorts of posts, demonstrating the importance
that they have and how effective they can be and maybe then going
to other funders—maybe it is the local authority or whatever—and
saying, "Right, now we want to embed this for the long-term
because we have seen what it can do". We can help in that
way but I do not think it would be helpful for us as a lottery
distributor to get into long-term core costs funding because I
think that would confuse the additionality argument.
Q245 Paul Farrelly: One of my colleagues
who is not here, Helen Southworth, is an archaeologist and we
have heard from the Council of British Archaeology about one particular
initiative that you have which is shortly to come to an end, which
they find very valuable and would dearly like some news of any
replacement, and that is the Local Heritage Initiative. I just
wondered what words you might be able to say about that this morning?
Ms Souter: Yes, the Local Heritage
Initiative has been an extraordinarily successful partnership
with the Countryside Agency and the Nationwide Building Society.
It has supported a range of local projects. Its distinctiveness
for us has been that it has provided a level of developmental
support which is not typical for all of our projects so a small
group that has not done any projects of this kind before has been
able to have some technical assistance and some support in developing
their project. That inevitably comes to an end because of the
changes in the structure of the natural environment bodies and
will come to an end this year. What we are doing at the moment
is reviewing all of our small grant programmes as part of our
planning for our next strategic plan and looking at what we can
learn from the programmes we have run so far and what we can take
forward into the future. I think the key thing from the Local
Heritage Initiative is identifying those groups that have got
a great idea but not very much capacity and finding a way of supporting
them so that they can take their project forward. Not all small
applicants need that sort of support and advice. It is not something
that we provide directly. We do not have the staffing and we do
not necessarily have the local knowledge or skills to do that
but the important thing for us is to find a way of putting those
smaller newer applicants in touch with the folk who can provide
them with the help, support and skills. I am sure that is something
that will be an element of our small grants programmes for the
future because it has worked incredibly well both with the local
heritage initiative and with our Young Roots scheme, where we
work with the National Youth Agency to provide funding for 13
to 20 year olds to engage them with heritage. You might think
they are a rather unpromising group to try and get involved in
heritage but actually they are incredibly interested and excited
and have come up with some really great ideas for projects. We
know that finding the right ways of supporting often first time
applicants is absolutely crucial to the success of small grants
programmes.
Q246 Paul Farrelly: A replacement
is under active consideration. One of the frustrations with constant
reorganisation across all parts of government is that by the time
you have set a scheme up and if anything is valuable people know
about it, suddenly it falls between the cracks and people do not
know where to go.
Dame Liz Forgan: That is a very
loud message you get from any kind of public consultation "For
God's sake do not keep changing the programmes because it takes
years for people to realise they are there". We try to keep
a pretty simple structure. Essentially we have big grants, medium
sized grants and small grants. We need to have those categories
because the issues involved in a £10 million huge great canal
scheme are quite different because you are dealing with different
people, different disciplines, and different supervision from
a small community matter like that so we have a different focus.
We do try to keep the number of our special programmes extremely
small and change them as little as we possibly can. As Carole
said, the reason why small grants have to be looked at again is
because of changes elsewhere which mean that structurally it has
to change. We will keep that message well in mind.
Paul Farrelly: I am sure we will address
this in the report.
Q247 Chairman: Your directions specifically
exclude grants being given for projects which are for private
gain and you also say in your evidence that " . . . assets
in private ownership are a low priority for HLF funding".
We have also heard evidence that private owners own and manage
two-thirds of the nation's built heritage and that they are under
severe pressure, particularly with the reduction in funding that
has taken place from English Heritage. Do you think it is now
time to reconsider your policy towards grants to private owners?
Dame Liz Forgan: We are just starting
the process of consulting on our next strategic plan. Every time
we do that we raise this subject again precisely because of the
point you make. We are in a bit of a bind. Our direction is pretty
elastic, it says we must have projects which promote the public
good or charitable purposes and which are not intended primarily
for private gain, so that gives us a bit of leeway. When we consult
people it is quite clear that the notion of handing large amounts
of money, as people would see it, to wealthy private owners is
not a popular idea. However, we have historically looked at ways
in which we can, with imagination and help, support the private
owners consistent with our directions. For instance, at the strategic
review, having listened to really eloquent and well-founded pleas,
especially from the owners of the historic buildings, what we
did was to put in place an encouragement to them to come to us
for schemes to support the public visitors to their houses: education,
public access, so that would all help with the support of those
buildings. Support for mending the roof of a historic house in
private ownership is never going to be our key priority, I am
afraid to say. Other people have a role in that but in terms of
lottery funding I think it is right to be straight with the private
sector and say, "Do not look to us for certain things that
we cannot do, come to us for the things we can". We will
look again, for instance, in this Strategic Plan to see whether
in terms of countryside management there are other ways in which
we can support private owners who are making their estates and
their land available for public enjoyment, things like that. I
think it would be wrong to imagine that we are likely to embark
on a major programme of supporting heritage assets in private
ownership per se and as a priority.
Q248 Chairman: Can I press you a
little bit on that. We have seen the ways in which private owners
use considerable imagination to access your funding. We went on
a particular visit where we saw facilities such as a sensory tour,
a Braille map for partially-sighted people and a virtual tour
of the property, all of which are worthy projects, but they pointed
out to us that the property is in a severe state of disrepair
and there is a major need for expenditure on keeping the roof
on. Does it not seem slightly strange that we should say it is
fine to give private money for virtual tours but the serious threat
to the fabric of the building cannot be addressed?
Dame Liz Forgan: It would do but
there are another couple more lines to that dialogue. If you are
a private owner of a historic building you have three choices.
You look after it yourself, you turn it into a trust which gives
it a different status and makes it immediately possible to look
to us for support, or you sell it to someone richer than you who
can afford to keep it up. Historically that has happened to many
great houses. That is the rule of the marketplace. I am speaking
to you honestly, I do not think it is ever likely that the Lottery
will devote the sorts of sums of money it would have to to make
any difference whatsoever to the maintenance of the privately
owned heritage to make that happen.
Q249 Chairman: I understand you feel
that it is not appropriate for the Lottery but you have said in
your evidence, grants for private owners have now almost totally
gone, HLF funding should not replace them and the Heritage White
Paper should address this issue. If HLF is not replaced, how should
the Heritage White Paper address the issue?
Dame Liz Forgan: I think that
if you talk to the owners of historic houses they will tell you
that in the past support that was available to them from, say,
English Heritage was much greater and it is no longer what it
used to be because English Heritage's funding has declined.
Q250 Chairman: Why is it right that
public money can be spent through English Heritage but not Lottery
money through HLF?
Dame Liz Forgan: I think "right"
is too strong a word for it. We have set out, within the terms
of our directions, the priorities which the Lottery will apply
to its funding, so everybody needs to be clear about the rules
and they have to understand what we do, why we do it and what
the priorities are. We do not say we will never fund private gain,
we say public gain must greatly outweigh the private gain and
it is never going to be a priority. That is our best guidance
to people before they spend a lot of money applying to us. I think
there is a perfectly good argument, which could be advanced, for
the nation if it saw fit to support private owners in continuing
ownership of historic assets through the statutory agencies if
they so wanted to.
Q251 Chairman: Can I move to another
aspect, which has cropped up in the evidence we have had from
several witnesses, which is the plea that rather than wait for
there to be a real problem requiring substantial expenditure on
repair, more attention should be paid to promoting effective maintenance
and therefore avoiding the need for that. Is that something which
you would be in agreement with and would be in a position to promote?
Dame Liz Forgan: Can I ask Carole
to answer that. I am passionately in favour of this but it is
necessary to keep a very cool head when replying to this matter.
Carole represents, in this instance, a cool head.
Ms Souter: We agree entirely.
Very often the projects that we support are tackling problems
that have accrued over many, many years and which would not be
so acute if proper ongoing maintenance had taken place. I think
the issue for us at the moment is how we can ensure that the projects
we fund put in place good maintenance regimes for the future so
they do not come back 10 years later saying "We had that
money for that particular building's refurbishment, or park, but
now, unfortunately, it is still in difficulty because we have
not been doing the ongoing maintenance." We require parks
projects, for example, and we require buildings'owners, to demonstrate
what their plans are to keep their estate in good order for the
future. What we do not do is provide funds for regular routine
maintenance for owners as a matter of course and that comes back
to the point I made earlier about additionality and ongoing funding.
It is the responsibility of owners to encourage good maintenance
and to make sure that they deliver the maintenance. I think what
we are keen to support is information about education, and the
development of skills in ensuring that maintenance happens on
a regular basis. As I say, for our own projects or the projects
which we fund we can require it, we obviously cannot require others
who do not come to us to ensure that they have got good maintenance
regimes in place. The more we can emphasise and draw attention
to the benefits of maintenance the better. I think, sadly, it
is probably true that even as ordinary run-of-the-mill homeowners
we do not always do the day-to-day maintenance in quite the way
we should, and it will take a lot of encouragement but I think
it is something that all of the bodies concerned with the heritage
need to be emphasising all the time. Buildings and historic artefacts
will require major maintenance from time to time and that cannot
be avoided but if the regular day-to-day, year-on-year maintenance
is kept under control that ten-yearly, 15-yearly cycle is much
easier to manage.
Q252 Chairman: Is there a danger
that there is a perverse incentive that owners will decide not
to spend money on maintenance because they allow it to deteriorate
so badly that they will not have access to funding for major repairs?
Ms Souter: I think it is certainly
the case that some of the major capital projects and renovations
that we have funded have been the result of lack of maintenance
over time. I think it would be a very brave owner who decided
to let things go in the hope of Lottery funding in the future,
and we would always want to know and understand why that maintenance
had not taken place in the past. I think in terms of local authorities
it is very often quite clear. We would not look kindly on any
suggestion that money was being diverted elsewhere on the assumption
that we would come along and bail them out afterwards.
Dame Liz Forgan: This is such
an important subject. Can I add a couple of points. One is that
I think we have to look forward, we cannot really deal with the
past. We need to be sure that we are doing all we possibly can
to see that in 10 years' time people are not coming back and asking
for money again for the same projects that we have been funding.
One of the things that we do, for instance, is to allow a local
authority which comes to us for, say, a park to capitalise 10
years of maintenance budgets as their match funding for our funding
which means that it is written into the contract, there it is,
there is a sum of money set aside in the budget for 10 years or
whatever the case may be. The problem is we do not have a police
force and the issue of how we enforce that is one we need to think
about a lot. The second issue I would lay on the table, because
I have no solution, is this,: I think here and there—and
I am thinking particularly of churches—health and safety
legislation has made it more difficult to enforce maintenance
regimes. Once upon a time you could stick a ladder up a church
and clear the gutters with a tall verger but now you have to scaffold
the blooming place and it has hugely added to costs and really
made the problem worse, for good reasons I am sure, but it is
an ingredient.
Q253 Paul Farrelly: The Chairman's
question has already touched on the overlap, welcome or not, between
English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, particularly where
heritage funding is reducing and people are looking to bodies
like yourself to fill the gap. I want to explore that further.
First of all, in terms of the delineation of roles between yourselves
and English Heritage, do you feel that they are clear or are there
some areas in which those roles could be made clearer?
Dame Liz Forgan: Carole used to
work at English Heritage so she is perhaps best placed to tell
you.
Ms Souter: I think they are pretty
clear. We are a UK-wide body covering the whole of the heritage
natural historic environment, cultures, traditions, industrial,
maritime and transport heritage. We have a very broad definition
and we go right across the piece. English Heritage has a range
of statutory roles and also obviously operates properties and
so on. I think whilst the public may regularly use English Heritage
Memorial/National Lottery Fund, in terms of the practitioners
I think there is no real confusion. I think it is absolutely essential
for us that English Heritage is in a position to fulfil its statutory
duties and obligations and that it has the resources to provide
the advice and the guidance that the sector needs in terms of
standards and in terms of knowledge and education and so on. I
think the discussion we had previously about private owners also
relates to the relevant grant making streams. We work very closely
with English Heritage in two particular ways in relation to grant
making, both asking them to provide us with expert advice in relation
to particular applications but also, in the joint scheme that
we run for places of worship where we each contribute appropriate
to our own aims, if you like, to a single scheme which makes it
easier for places of worship to have one place to go for a grant
and not to have to apply to each of us for different things. I
think that does work extremely effectively and, as with other
organisations that have statutory responsibilities in fields which
we cover, we have very close links in terms of policy discussions,
planning and those sorts of things. I think that there is a clear
distinction between them.
Q254 Paul Farrelly: That then begs
the question, do you think as things currently stand and as things
develop in the near future that English Heritage is well-equipped
and sufficiently resourced to fulfil its responsibilities?
Ms Souter: I think there is a
tremendous demand on English Heritage to provide the extraordinary
depth of expertise and knowledge that they have to an increasingly
demanding customer base, if you like. We talked earlier about
local authorities, and there is no doubt that English Heritage's
work to help skill local authorities, both in terms of officers
and indeed in terms of members, is extremely important and I am
sure they could happily devote significantly more resource to
that area of work. I think it is important that English Heritage
continues to be properly resourced. For a whole range of reasons
they have not had the increasing level of resources which I think
they feel they need to keep up with demand. Obviously from our
point of view the more skills, expertise and knowledge there is
out there in the world, the easier it is for us to respond to
an application quickly and positively, and say, "Yes, this
has got everything we need in it", and to disburse funds
accordingly.
Q255 Paul Farrelly: Without disparaging
English Heritage and the good people there in any way, in short
the answer to the question is "no" at the moment?
Ms Souter: They could always use
more resource, and I think they need more resource to be able
to make best use of the skills that they have got. They are such
an extraordinary resource of knowledge and expertise and, as we
have said already, that knowledge and expertise is not shared
across the countryside in all those places where it is needed.
Q256 Paul Farrelly: Do you think
that impacts on your work as well and their being insufficiently
equipped therefore lets you down?
Ms Souter: I do not think it lets
us down, but I think it means that sometimes people who come to
us need to take a little bit longer, need more help, maybe need
to buy in help and it might be better for them to have more skills
themselves having learned from English Heritage and taken advantage
of that knowledge.
Q257 Paul Farrelly: Liz, you are
straining!
Dame Liz Forgan: I think in an
ideal world you have a really well resourced statutory agency
whose expertise is established and respected which, for instance,
administers rules about conservation areas so that everybody knows
where they are and they work, and then the Lottery can dance around,
be free to do its work, without getting involved in areas where
it has not the expertise. I have to say, if you want to see what
happens when the statutory agency is really not properly resourced,
you look to Northern Ireland where you see awful depredation going
on; not that anybody wills it, it is just there is not a structure,
there is not a proper statutory agency to stand over it and say,
"This is right and this is not right and this is how we are
going to do it". I think English Heritage does a pretty good
job but I think, as Carole says, the demand for that function
and that expertise, in order to maximise the value of not only
the heritage but also the Lottery contribution, is clear.
Q258 Paul Farrelly: Earlier on in
response to previous questions, this horrible word/jargon "additionality"
was used. Given the resource constraints in English Heritage at
the moment, how do you feel that you are now being asked to substitute
for what should be central government funding and projects? What
pressure have you been under?
Ms Souter: I do not think we are
asked directly to substitute for government funding. We have already
mentioned local authority funding; I think there is no doubt that
there are areas where we are funding projects which are dealing
with many years of underfunding, whether it be local museums,
parks, whatever. We are pretty clear about not substituting for
government funding. It is a terrible word, "additionality",
and it is incredibly hard to define, but I think we have got pretty
good at knowing what we mean by it and spotting it. We always
look to see how we can add value, if you like, do things that
would not be possible without our funding. Sometimes that is because
there simply is no other source of funding available; sometimes
it is because we can add an extra layer of quality, inclusion
or access to a project that might otherwise have happened but
not happened in the same way. As Liz said earlier, we have got
pretty elastic directions and I think we would both feel very
strongly that we are not placed in a position where we are asked
to do things in an inappropriate way. Were that to happen, we
would be pretty good at making clear what that remit is as well.
No, I do not think we are regularly asked to substitute for government
funding. What I would say is that there is a range of areas where
government funding would make a significant difference. We have
not mentioned the National Heritage Memorial Fund this morning
which is a fund operated by the same trustees that is a resource
for acquisitions. We would very much welcome an increase to that
funding to support acquisitions of objects, paintings, whatever.
We also, of course, hope that the Government's review of the shares
of good cause money going to heritage, which will be known in
the middle of this year, will confirm the percentage of good cause
monies that the Heritage Lottery Fund distributes. I think it
would be a great loss to the sector if that were to decline in
any sense.
Q259 Paul Farrelly: Finally, Chairman,
if you will permit me, let me ask the same question a different
way, because any body with money is going to be approached by
anyone with nous to get any project off the ground. To what extent
do you feel—even if it is not a scientific measurement—that
people now are coming to you when they have approached English
Heritage and English Heritage have said, "Sorry, have not
got the money, try the Lottery Fund", for projects that they
previously would have funded? Likewise, although my Government
has done a grand job in giving local councils more cash, they
are not exactly awash with the stuff at the moment and there are
great pressures on grant-giving for non-statutory functions in
local councils these days. To what extent do you feel over time
that again people are saying, "Try the Lottery Fund"
for projects in the past that they would have been able to fund
or part fund?
Dame Liz Forgan: Occasionally
people do say, "Try the Lottery Fund", but we are quite
alert to this problem. It is not an exact science, as Carole says,
but we will always ask questions. If somebody comes to us, we
will say, "Is there somebody else whose job this is? Is there
somebody else that has a responsibility for this? Why have they
not done it?" If somebody comes to us and asks us to fund
their disability access to a building, we will say, "No,
that is your statutory duty. We are not funding that". If
somebody finds asbestos and they want asbestos taken out of the
roof of the museum and they come to us, we will say, "No,
that is the job of the DCMS". We will only help with things
like that in the context of a completely total Lottery project.
We are quite alert to that. People do try it on, of course they
do a) because that is human nature and b) because the Lottery
does represent a large amount of money and, as you say, it attracts
people with need, but it is our job to maintain and police that
separation. I think it may be that the fact that we are only a
Lottery distributor helps us to maintain some clarity in this.
The Arts Council, for instance, has two streams that it administers
almost as a single fund and I sometimes wonder how they manage
to tell which hat they are wearing. It is quite easy for us.
Ms Souter: Other sources of partnership
funding are becoming more and more difficult to find, so I think
that as European monies are lost from some areas, for example,
we will find more people coming to us and saying, "Could
you fund more of that because we have not got that source of funding?"
That is going to be an increasing pressure particularly on regeneration-type
projects in historic areas and historic buildings.
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