Examination of Witnesses (Quesitons 80-99)
DEPARTMENT FOR
CULTURE, MEDIA
AND SPORT,
SPORT ENGLAND,
ENGLISH HERITAGE,
ARTS COUNCIL
AND BIG
LOTTERY FUND
MONDAY 2 JUNE
2008
Q80 Chairman: Mr Davey, I see in
that same figure that you gave £7,500 to David Fine, the
poet in residence for the 2006 Ashes cricket test, where he wrote
25 poems, one for each day of play. Were the poems any good?
Mr Davey: I believe they were,
yes. I heard some of them on the radio, fine poems celebrating
a fine game.
Q81 Chairman: Have we heard them
ever again?
Mr Davey: I am not sure, to be
honest.
Q82 Phil Wilson: My question is to
Simon Thurley and it is about repair grants for places of worship
where it costs you nearly £10,000 for each grant and the
vast majority of that money you say goes on architects and surveyors.
What are you doing to ensure that such experts are being employed
efficiently?
Dr Thurley: Our grants typically
go to places of worship where there is very little expertise in
the business of conservation. Last year we gave a grant to a church
in Manchester called St Clements, Ordsall, where the incumbent
had just arrived. It was the first church that she was vicar of.
Neither of her churchwardens had ever had a bank account and neither
of them had ever owned property. She had no architectural training.
She is a very enthusiastic, dynamic, evangelical vicar. She was
faced with a £250,000 bill to stop water pouring into the
roof, so what we feel is very important to do in that circumstance,
when neither the incumbent nor the parochial church council or
the churchwardens have any experience in this, is to make sure
that they have the appropriate advice, they have an appropriate
scheme, they have a scheme that is tendered to the right costs;
it is not over the top, and then eventually a scheme that brings
public benefit too. We need to make sure that there is adequate
public access afterwards because public money comes with public
access as far as buildings are concerned, and also that there
is an adequate maintenance plan put in place so that when the
works that the taxpayer after all is funding are finished the
church will continue maintaining the building so that that work
was not just put to waste and we found that they needed repairs
again in another few years' time. That figure that you refer to
really relates to the works of our architectural team of very
experienced architects, many of whom have 10, 15, 20 or even more
years' experience of dealing with these very old and complex buildings.
They go in and advise the congregation and the incumbents and
also the architects.
Q83 Phil Wilson: Mr Wanless, in the
Reaching Communities programme, first of all can you explain what
that is and what it is supposed to do? I have looked at the figures
and it seems to me that four out of five grants are rejected,
which points out to me that apparently not very many communities
are being reached. It is in paragraph 4.2.
Mr Wanless: As I mentioned earlier,
Reaching Communities is our most open grant programme of all the
programmes which the Big Lottery Fund runs across England basically
to help communities develop issues that are important to them
pretty much across the Big Lottery Fund's portfolio, and this
was responding to a desire in the voluntary community sector to
have a programme which gave them plenty of space to develop and
deliver the things which really matter to them in their communities,
so we could be supporting under this programme all sorts of activities
from environmental developments of one kind or another to health
promotion, education community development, you name it. As I
say, because it is open it attracts a large number of applicants
and we will need to consider when we review our programmes later
this year the balance between open programmes and failure rates,
if you like. As I described earlier, we have tried to reduce very
considerably the costs to which potential applicants are being
put through this programme by introducing a much tougher outline
proposal stage which makes clearer to people the likelihood of
succeeding and what they would need to do to succeed so that people
who are proceeding through the full application are doing so very
clearly in the knowledge that they have only got a one in five
chance of being successful under this particular programme.
Q84 Phil Wilson: Is there any common
reason for why four out of five are being rejected?
Mr Wanless: It could be a variety
of issues but sometimes it is simply that we have not got enough
money to go round. There are a lot of excellent projects that
with more money are clearly fundable and we would like to be able
to support.
Q85 Phil Wilson: So are we going
to see an increase in the funding for this particular initiative?
Mr Wanless: We will have to consider
its position in the portfolio programmes which the Big Lottery
Fund runs. As I say, it is popular but what people do not like
about it is the failure rate that you have described.
Q86 Phil Wilson: It is just that
when I read that and I looked at the headline I thought that you
are not reaching very many communities if four out of five of
the applications that you receive are being rejected.
Mr Wanless: We are reaching the
one in five which in absolute numbers is 452 awards in 2006-07
and it was always going to be round about that number, however
many actually apply, because that was the amount of money that
we had available, and there will be communities being reached
through all sorts of other programmes that we run. One of the
things that we have sought to do over the last 12 months or so
in that outline proposal stage is refer people very much more
carefully to other funding opportunities that are available, not
just from the Big Lottery Fund but from our Young People's Fund
grants, for example, where the success rate would be considerably
higher, up to programmes being run by other funders.
Q87 Phil Wilson: We saw the budget
for this particular programme was increased. Does that mean each
individual application will receive more money or does it mean
that more applicants would receive a share of the pot?
Mr Wanless: It would depend on
the rules we chose to apply to the programme, I suppose, as to
whether we wanted to hand out larger or smaller awards.
Q88 Phil Wilson: Mr Holgate, can
I make two points on international comparators? What do you do
to learn from experiences from other countries? I know in the
USA apparently they have one common website to promote grants,
which was mentioned in questioning earlier on. What other countries
do you look at to try and find out best practice? Is there anything
we can learn from other countries that run lotteries, et cetera,
or award grants?
Mr Holgate: Consistent with the
department's view that there is a great deal of particularity
about the recipients and the fields of endeavour that we support
through each of these bodies, the main contact will be done through
the NDPBs. Simon will forgive me for mentioning that he was in
Copenhagen last week meeting several dozen of his opposite numbers
from across Europe, and there are lots of them because each land
in Germany has its own heritage conservation organisation, so
there is such learning but it is done mainly on the basis of the
NDPB in question.
Q89 Phil Wilson: Do you liaise with
the Lloyds TSB Foundation or even the Northern Rock Foundation
in the north east which does a lot of good work in the area where
I am from? Do you talk to them? What do you learn from each other?
Mr Holgate: Indeed. Peter mentioned
earlier the Association of Charitable Foundations and the fact
that the Big Lottery Fund are in contact with them.
Q90 Phil Wilson: Paragraphs 4.18
through to 2.0 are about "Grant-makers in the sector could
do more to share information about grant-making". We have
heard a lot today about what we can learn from each of the programmes
about the best way of awarding grants, et cetera. There is a body
you refer to here called the Lottery Forum. Can someone explain
to me what that is and whether you share best practice on that?
What role does the Lottery Forum play? Is that a way in which
you could migrate best practice?
Mr Holgate: It is a potential
vehicle for precisely that. I think it involves not just the three
lottery bodies represented here but also the Heritage Lottery
Fund on which the Committee had a hearing not long ago and other
bodies that are lottery distributors. I think precisely what they
do is to compare notes of the things that they are doing. The
issue is how much time should we put into a process like that
compared to alternative ways of getting better value for lottery
programmes. I do not know whether I am traducing it but I think
it is a relatively light touch process at the moment and even
to come up to scratch on the first recommendation that the NAO
make it will have to become a little bit more heavy duty.
Mr Wanless: I agree with that.
There are some specific illustrations of activities where as lottery
distributors we have sought to get our act together and work out
common processes and be more efficient and effective, and one
would be a capital centre of excellence where we have been looking
across the distributors at best practice for preparing yourself
for making capital investments of one kind or another where our
respective experts got together with one another and worked out
common ideas and a common approach, so there is something to work
on.
Q91 Phil Wilson: Do you see a bigger
role for the Lottery Forum going forward?
Mr Wanless: Potentially, yes.
Ms Price: Just to add to that,
as well as the chief executives meeting within the Forum the finance
directors meet separately, and I think there is a significant
opportunity for us to encourage them to exchange information on
a more regular basis.
Q92 Mr Bacon: Dr Thurley, I would
like to ask you about the work you are doing to restore buildings
where you say that sometimes you even provide support to the architects
and you give the example of the evangelical vicar who had no experience
of building contracting. I have a project in my constituency which
I am pleased to say has just been given a very large grant of
£900,000 to restore a 14th century chapel at the back of
a school, which was part of the BBC Restoration Village competition
and got to the semi-final. I should say for the record that I
live in the village where the building is although that is a complete
coincidence; I had nothing to do with their success, but the reason
why I can see why they were successful when they came to see me
was because of the detail that they had gone into. They had got
very clear records. They knew which grant-making bodies other
than public sector ones and the lottery had criteria that they
could meet and which did not. Is not part of your job in distinguishing
between the many applications you get to use as a criterion the
capacity of somebody to meet these needs that you have described
before you make the grant? I am quite surprised that you are supporting
architects. In fact, the one in Norfolk made me think of this
because they chose the architects specifically because they thought
they were highly suitable for that particular project. Why are
you supporting architects? Surely they should either be able to
run with this or you should not be funding them?
Dr Thurley: Quite right. Our Places
of Worship scheme has two phases to it. Each year we get about
500 applicants and we find that about half of them are eliminated
in the first six weeks and we have a very close look at the applications.
It is a relatively simple application process and we try and work
out which places of worship are capable of taking such a project
forward in exactly the same way as you are suggesting. That is
the very first step.
Q93 Mr Bacon: How much money do you
spend in that programme for which you have 500 applicants?
Dr Thurley: The total, because
we do it jointly with the Heritage Lottery Fund, is £24 million.
Q94 Mr Bacon: Each year?
Dr Thurley: Each year.
Q95 Mr Bacon: For those 500 applicants?
Dr Thurley: Yes, and of the 500
it is about 240 who will get through. A big chunk of them are
eliminated at the first fence and they are told very quickly,
because our architects will look at it and because most of these
places we know of, quite honestly.
Q96 Mr Bacon: Is it just for the
church roof quite often?
Dr Thurley: Our scheme is confined
to high level repairs, so it is roof and it is masonry, no improvements,
and it is really for places that are desperate where literally
there are buckets up the aisle or, if it is a synagogue, whatever
you have in the middle of a synagogue. That is who it is confined
to. We do that sift initially. The next phase, which is why our
scheme takes a bit longer to come to a resolution than the other
schemes, is that our architects then go out and visit every single
one of the 50% which get through the first sift, and that is where
what you are talking about comes in. We then meet the architects
and we have to take a view as to whether the architect has got
it right. Some of them are very good and have great experience
of dealing with 700-year old masonry. Others are not so good.
That is where our people come in and at that stage we knock out
another 7% or 8% and we end up giving grants to about 46% of applicants.
Q97 Mr Bacon: It is not for me to
suggest ways that you could be creative in your accounting, but
is there not something to be said for the idea that if you are
helping them with structuring invitations to tender for contractors
and that kind of thing there ought to be a column of the cost
of the professional help to get this right rather than the cost
of the grant-making?
Dr Thurley: That is right. Of
the 7.6% which the NAO quote in their report only 1.5% is administration,
4.5% is the cost of what I am describing to you, which is our
architects going out, and the balancers of the costs are our quantity
surveyors, because one of the other things that we do is maintain
a database of the cost of this sort of work because a normal QS
firm will not really be able to help you in how to put shingles
on the spire of a mediaeval church, so we have our own cost database
so that we can have a close look at what the costs are. As you
rightly say, only 1.5%, in other words 1.5p in the pound, is the
administration costs of our scheme.[2]
Q98 Mr Bacon: I am interested to hear
you talking about quantity surveyors because I have sat on this
Committee for seven years and I think you are the first witness
I have heard talking about quantity surveyors as if it is something
you should do regularly, although many of our witnesses are people
who should have been talking to quantity surveyors. I was told
by the President of the Royal Institute of British Architects
that Portcullis House, the building over the road, would have
been cheaper to build had they clad the exterior in 7-series BMWs
than what they actually did. Are you sharing your obvious expertise
with other government departments and agencies who could plainly
benefit from it?
Dr Thurley: The slight difficulty
is that very few governments or government agencies have buildings
700 years old.
Q99 Mr Bacon: This one. Well—
Dr Thurley: There are one or two.
The expertise that we have on costing is shared not only in this
grant scheme but through all the grant and regulatory activities
that we undertake.
The Committee suspended from 4.38 pm to
4.44 pm for a division in the House
2 Note by witness: The 4.5% cost of using English
Heritage Architects to ensure good quality proposals and projects,
includes the cost of our Quantity Surveyors and the database of
tender costs that they maintain. The balance of time, 1.5%, is
spent on directly mentoring applicants through the development
stage of the process, undertaken after they have received grant
and are in the process of building up the full details of the
grant-aided building repair project. Back
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