Heritage Lottery Fund

HC 502, Fifty-fourth Report of Session 2006-07 - Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written Evidence

Author:: House of Commons - Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher:: TSO (The Stationery Office)

Heritage Lottery Fund (HC 502)

Since it was set up in 1994, the Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded £3.8 billion of funding to some 24,000 projects covering all types of heritage with a wide range of benefits. The Fund operates within a framework of policy directions issued by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and currently distributes one sixth of the money raised by the National Lottery for good causes.

Following on from a March 2007 National Audit Office report ('Heritage Lottery Fund (HC 323)' - ISBN 0102944628, available below), the Committee's report looks at how the money has been spent, what has been achieved, and the effectiveness of the grant-making process to ensure value for money. Conclusions reached include:

The Fund has successfully reduced the amount of undistributed money it holds but spends around 9% of its annual income on administration.
Many applicants find the Fund's application and assessment processes confusing, off-putting, and unnecessarily burdensome, and there are significant variations in funding between regions.
The Fund is not able to demonstrate effectively its impact in opening up the heritage to people from deprived or minority backgrounds.
Although projects are largely delivered to time and cost, the Fund has done little to tackle the poor project management skills of some grant recipients.

From April 2009, the Government intends to divert more than £160 million from the Fund to help pay for the 2012 Olympics and the Fund's income may be further reduced by as much as £95 million if ring-fenced income from Olympic lottery games diverts sales from other lottery games.

Extent	58 pages	ISBN	9780215036711
Size	A4	Price	£13.50
Binding	Paperback	Published	23 Oct 2007
Availability	Colour copy: 3 - 5 days	Delivery	Delivery options and charges