We can now share with you a response from the Heritage Lottery Fund to the news that the bill for the Olympics has risen to 9.35 billion. Their statements says:
‘This is bad news for the UK’s heritage’, comments Dame Liz Forgan, Chair, Heritage Lottery Fund. ‘Our grant making for the foreseeable future will now be seriously reduced, affecting people right across the United Kingdom. In recent years our Lottery money has been the single largest source of support not only for our historic places, museums and galleries but also for our natural heritage and the cultural history of the people of these islands. Heritage funding was already due to drop because of the Olympics and this further cut will impact on our ability to invest in the nation’s heritage at exactly the time it is being showcased to the world in 2012.’
The Heritage Lottery Fund will now begin to revise its forward funding plans with a view to letting clients know as soon as possible what its revised forecasts for annual levels of grant-making are for 2008 onwards.
Projects which have already received a promise of funding from the HLF need not be concerned: the Fund will work to ensure that commitments can be honoured.
Heritage Link issued a statement today which gave more specific numbers.
It means a raid of £90m from the HLF and comes on top of already reduced funding after 2008, when HLF’s current £290m per year drops to £180m. This further reduction of £90m is the equivalent of four years’ spend on small community and voluntary sector grants and the entire grant stream aimed at involved young people.
They went on to urge the government to put its money where its mouth is:
The announcement also comes just a week after the Prime Minister’s speech at Tate Modern when he recognised the contribution that arts and culture make to the economy, society and to the country. In the same week, the new Heritage White Paper2 published by the Department for Culture Media and Sport made key statements on the value of heritage. The Government has recognised the contribution made by volunteers in ring-fencing Big Lottery money but seems to have forgotten the tens of thousand of volunteers that care for our heritage.
So tell us, what effects will the doubling (or trebling if you include the new £2.7bn contingency fund) of the cost of the Olympics have on the ability of building preservation trusts and other community groups to keep on finding innovative new ways to conserve, use and revitalise our old buildings?
Back in November 2006 The Guardian reported that the Heritage Lottery Fund was expecting to lose £143 million as a result of the Olympics, mostly taking effect after 2009. At the time the HLF told the paper:
We would, of course, be concerned at any further allocation of heritage lottery money to the Olympics, since it would affect our ability to support our national heritage at a time when it will be an important part of the UK’s wider offering to Olympic visitors.
Also last year Tristram Hunt ( a trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund) warned the government against “raiding” heritage funds for the Olympics, saying:
…if more people are going to appreciate the history and meaning of this old, complex country, then ministers are going to have to keep their fingers out of the lottery till and deliver a proper heritage settlement.
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations gave it’s double edged reaction today by first saying it “welcomed the Government’s commitment that the voluntary and community sector will not suffer as a result of the increased budget for the 2012 Olympic Games” but then already flagging up fears for heritage funding:
We remain concerned that arts, sports and heritage charities and community groups may lose out as a result of the diversion and are seeking further details on exactly how this commitment will be kept.
Only last month the chairman of the Big Lottery Fund Sir Clive Booth said it would be criminal to divert resources:
I don’t know how anybody could live with themselves, let alone Gordon Brown, if they were taking money off projects such as that to close an Olympic funding gap
Of course we are a charity and one of those voluntary organisations which the government argues will not be harmed by the leap in the budget for the Olympics. Any fall in the budget for the Heritage Lottery Fund may have a direct impact of what we can accomplish here in Birmingham. It would be good to know what we can expect.
Peter Hewitt at the Arts Council is already certain this is bad news for his sector, while Variety reports (first thing this morning) it will have an impact on film (thanks to the National Film Society).
Meanwhile Seb Coe of the Olympic bid described sport as “the hidden social worker in the community”.
The Wolverhampton Express and Star made this video about the project (yes - newspapers do tv these days!), the Birmingham Post reported it here
plus mentions on 24hourmuseum and on thestirrer plsu the BBC website.
This video is well worth a few minutes of your time. In it Cllr Martin Mullaney (a fomer trustee of the Birmingham Conservation Trust) takes us on a tour of the Grade II Moseley Road Tram depot offices - now empty and gutted. He (and Keith Marsden who runs the also listed Epic Skatepark behind the office buildings) encounter the owner of the building and challenge him on why it is such poor condition.
This video is quite controversial… The owner of this property has since sent me a solicitors letter demanding that all copies of this video are destroyed by the 7th March otherwise they will take me to court. They have not clarified on what grounds they would do this.
You can comment on the film itself through this link or you can of course add your thoughts to our comment section on this blog entry.
This week the government has proposed to reform and simplify the way heritage sites are listed and protected to create “a unified…system, with more opportunities for public involvement” which will “put the historic environment at the heart of the planning system”.
The Heritage White paper proposes to:
* replace listing, scheduling and registering with a single system for designating historic places.
* open up the system to greater public consultation and scrutiny, and by creating a single new Register of Historic Buildings replacing all existing lists and schedules.
* introduce ‘interim protection’ for historic assets while they are being considered for designation, and create new appeals procedures against designation.
* put the historic environment at the heart of the planning system, merging listed building consent and scheduled monument consent, and conservation area consent with planning permission.
* clarify and strengthen protections for World Heritage Sites, and enhance protection for archaeological remains in the marine environment and on cultivated land.
English Heritage (charged with taking over the listing propcess from government) is delighted with the proposals, enthusing that they:
strip out the bureaucracy of the heritage protection system, demystify the process of listing and make it fairer and more accessible. For the first time, house owners will be consulted when their house is being considered for listing; they will have the right to appeal; it will be easier to make changes to complex listed sites
Heritage Link responded by welcoming the simplification and clarification of the system but went on to argue that it will take more than this to portect our heritage:
Until public financial support is assured, the longer term maintenance and security of our heritage hangs under a darkening cloud
For more details on the consultation on the white paper visit here.
The third Lower Eastside dialogue of 2007 will include a contribution from Ramona Usher - the project development oficer here at the Birmingham Conservation Trust.
It’s a chance to explore the link between heritage and regeneration in our cities, especially from the perspective of Birmingham and the Digbeth, Deritend area. With Ramona will be Dr Noha Nassr of UCE, and Izzy Mohammed of connecting histories, chaired by the photographer and film maker Pogus Ceaser.
It is all on the evening of March 22nd at the Bond in Fazeley Street. To book a place please contact Roger Shannon email: rogershannon@dsl.pipex.com. You can find the flyer attached here.
