Memorandum submitted by Heritage Lottery
Fund (HLF)
THE HERITAGE
LOTTERY FUND
1. The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) is the
largest dedicated funder of the UK's heritage, with £180
million a year to invest in new projects. HLF has committed over
£4.2 billion to more than 28,000 heritage projects across
the UK since 1995.
2. HLF's view of heritage is broad, progressive
and inclusive. Understanding, valuing and sharing diverse histories
changes lives, brings people together and provides the foundation
of a confident, modern society.
3. The Fund's focus is on conserving, sustaining
and sharing heritage. Through its grant making it aims to:
— conserve the UK's diverse heritage
for present and future generations to experience and enjoy;
— help more people, and a wider range
of people, to take an active part in and make decisions about
their heritage; and
— help people to learn about their
own and other people's heritage.
DRAFT HERITAGE
PROTECTION BILL
4. HLF broadly welcomes the draft Heritage
Protection Bill, which will increase the ability of the statutory
system to protect the wide range of heritage that HLF funds and
safeguard its investment.
5. In particular, HLF welcomes the proposals
in the Bill to bring together buildings, archaeological sites,
parks and gardens under one registration scheme. The Heritage
Lottery Fund has encouraged an integrated, holistic approach to
heritage protection and management, which has enabled its projects—houses
set within parks, industrial buildings set within their landscapes,
area-wide historic townscapes etc—to be far more transformative
than would otherwise have been the case.
6. Whilst HLF is pleased to see that no
element of the Bill as it currently stands will lessen protection
of the historic environment, it is concerned that clauses relating
to Conservation Areas are not included and will be included only
when the Bill is introduced. Despite the importance of Conservation
Areas in protecting much of the UK's heritage, any changes to
the system ensuring their protection will not receive the same
level of pre-legislative scrutiny as the rest of the Bill.
7. A central concern is that the successful
operation of the proposed Heritage Asset Consent Regime is very
largely dependent on the resources available to local authorities
and funding from government must be sufficient to enable all local
authorities to employ and train dedicated conservation staff.
Currently around 30% of local authorities only have one full or
part time conservation professional in post, around 20% have no
access to specialist conservation services, more than 10% have
no internal conservation service of any type, and 2% take no conservation
advice of any kind[52].
HLF has a legal contract with its grantees for the maintenance
and upkeep of the heritage that it funds, which is enforced for
a period of 10 years after it awards the grant. Beyond this period,
the long-term protection of those buildings and sites that HLF
funds is in the hands of local authorities and they must be adequately
resourced to deliver their responsibilities in this regard.
8. HLF sees Sites and Monuments Records/Historic
Environment Records (SMRs/HERs) as one of the most important ways
of maintaining and disseminating knowledge about the historic
environment. To 31 March 2007 HLF had made 10 awards to local
authorities in England for projects which have enabled SMRs/HERs
to provide digital access to records, create educational resources
and run community outreach projects. Whilst HLF welcomes the proposed
duty to create and keep up to date Historic Environment Records
(HERs), it should be recognised that making this a statutory responsibility
of local authorities will mean that HLF will not be able fund
any activities which are included among the statutory duties of
HERs. (Though it could continue to fund relevant activities which
are not included amongst statutory duties—as long as they
meet HLF criteria—such as outreach to schools or community
groups). At the same time, making HERs statutory may encourage
many HLF grantees to deposit in them the detailed conservation,
management and maintenance plans that they develop as part of
their applications.
HLF would be willing to expand on any of these
points if that would be useful.
June 2008
52 "Quantifying local planning authority conservation
staffing", IHBC 2006 Back
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