Grant budget for new awards 2012-2013
The Heritage Lottery Fund has just agreed an increased budget for new awards in 2012-13 of £375m. This budget represents an increase of £120m over our 2011-2012 budget and is made possible by the increase in the heritage share of good cause income to 20% in April 2012, and continuing record ticket sales.
A number of other changes will also be introduced, which respond to our recent consultation and pave the way towards our strategic plan for 2013-19, which will be launched next May.
More detail and finalised budgets for 2012-2013 will be announced in the spring. We currently expect this increased budget to be allocated as follows across HLF’s programmes:
- Heritage Grants (awards over £50,000) will have a total budget of £255m, including at least £50m for Major Batch projects (grants over £5m).
- Parks for People budget will be £24m across the UK, plus an additional £5m investment from Big Lottery Fund for parks in England.
- Landscape Partnerships budget will be £22m.
- Townscape Heritage Initiative budget will be £14m, with an additional application round in 2012 for decision in March 2013.
- Repair Grants for Places of Worship budget will be £30m across the UK.
- Your Heritage budget will be £26m. Note that grants will be available up to £100,000 from April, see below.
- 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 see below.
- We will announce a further strategic investment in skills in 2012-2013 – details to be confirmed.
Other changes
Further detail about our new strategic plan from 2013 onwards will be announced in May 2012. However, HLF will be introducing a number of changes to programmes which respond to customer feedback and help manage our business even more effectively, 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). 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.
- We will introduce single stage Heritage Grants applications by exception when there is an urgent external deadline, for example on partnership funding.