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Were the trustees allocating huge grants to the big heritage institutions and neglecting “grass roots” heritage?
2 2. Were some regions (usually a euphemism for London and the South East) getting a disproportionate slice of the lottery cake?
3 3. Were some heritage sectors doing rather better than others?
TABLE 3.2 Heritage Lottery Fund – distribution of awards by size of grant
| Financial year | % by total value of awards going to grants of under £1m | % of total value of awards going to grants of £5m and over |
| 2002/2003 | 35.9 | 33.0 |
| 2003/2004 | 37.4 | 26.3 |
| 2004/2005 | 36.6 | 28.8 |
| 2005/2006 | 39.7 | 28.7 |
| 2006/2007 | 40.8 | 25.6 |
| 2007/2008 | 44.0 | 21.7 |
Source: HLF Annual Reports
The government issues “policy directions” to the lottery distributors, steering them toward ensuring that their independent policies and grant criteria take full account of the government’s own policy. DCMS used policy directions to intervene on the first question, trying to ensure that HLF recognized that the heritage can be tangible (e.g., a church) and intangible (e.g., oral histories); that it is owned and supported by millions, not just an elite few; and that access to lottery funding must indeed be “for the many not just a few.”
The 1997 Act empowered Trustees to assist projects (revenue as well as capital) directed to increasing public understanding and enjoyment of the heritage, and to interpreting and recording important aspects of the nation’s history, natural history, and landscape. Similarly, responding to policy directions meant eventually that a much broader definition of “heritage projects” was accepted and small grants for small community organizations for what they considered to be heritage was encouraged and enabled. The impact of its intervention can be seen in Table 3.2, which shows that the percentage of grant money being allocated to smaller projects increased and the amount allocated to large capital projects fell.
The second and third questions were closely monitored by HLF themselves. With the coming of New Labour in 1997 and a wider definition of what heritage was, it became easier to ensure that grants were not skewed toward major museums or the most well-known heritage sites (Table 3.2). Grants could be mapped against population densities and “cold spots” identified. HLF also set up development teams in each region who actively helped potential applicants to reach the point where they could submit a proposal. In these ways HLF tried to ensure a fair distribution of lottery money back into the communities that had funded it.
The 1998 Act enabled HLF to “regionalize” by setting up 12 committees in the nations and English regions to which decisions (up to a certain grant size ceiling) could be delegated. It also meant the setting up of regional offices which helped HLF counter complaints that HLF was too London-focused, and not sufficiently in touch with grass-roots heritage across the UK. It also helped ensure a greater degree of fairness in geographical distribution, as discussed above.
Effects
All in all, New Labour may be able to claim that its interventions democratized the distribution of lottery grants to the heritage. On its part, HLF may be equally justified in feeling that it has retained its integrity and not deviated from only supporting heritage that merited it.
Case study 2: Renaissance in the Regions
Since 2003, groups of museums in each of the English regions have been receiving funding from the government to improve and extend their services, as part of a program called Renaissance. Renaissance is the most significant development in English non-national museums since the Museums Act 1845, which empowered cities to set up Free Museums. It builds on the achievements of the HLF and the Designation Challenge Fund, which identified the most significant collections built up by non-national museums over the past 150 years.
Intentions
Renaissance was designed to respond to the state of England’s regional museums. By the 1990s many of the country’s largest regional museums were suffering from ongoing funding cuts, leaving them unable to meet the expectations of their users. In 2000, Chris Smith, then Secretary of State for Culture, convened a Regional Museums Task Force to look into the problems facing regional museums, and to propose solutions for their future development. Their report, Renaissance in the Regions: A New Vision for England’s Museums (2001), proposed that regional museums could be:
an important resource and champion for learning and education;
promote access and inclusion encouraging social inclusion and cultural diversity, acting as focal points for their local communities, and providing public spaces for dialogue and discussion about issues of contemporary significance;
contribute to economic regeneration in the regions;
collect, care for and interpret (on a foundation of research and scholarship) the material culture of the UK and use it to encourage inspiration and creativity;
ensure excellence and quality in the delivery of their core services.
(RMTF 2001, 21)
In order to achieve that the Task Force proposed an innovative structure, with a “hub” for each of the nine English regions, made up of a group of the largest and most significant museums. Each museum remained the responsibility of its existing governing body but the structure created a channel for significant funding contributions from central government, something which had been recommended in various reports since the 1920s but which was now to be achieved for the first time.5 The report not only highlighted funding difficulties but also demonstrated how relatively small sums of government investment could create a real improvement in the number of people who could be reached by better services. Furthermore, the hubs would be working together to improve museums across the whole region.
Administrative and delivery mechanisms
In the 2002 Spending Review, the gover nment allocated £70 million to the Renaissance program, about one-third of that recommended by the report. In order to demonstrate what the impact of full funding could be, the Task Force recommended that it should be implemented in phases. The government agreed and tasked Resource (subsequently MLA) with the management and delivery of Renaissance.
In the first phase, three hubs (North East, South West, and West Midlands) were given the majority of the money they needed to implement the Renaissance vision and the other six received small sums of money for development and planning. The government allocated further funding for Renaissance in the Spending Review of 2004. Although this was again less than the sum