Heritage Lottery Fund

Who we are

About the Heritage Lottery Fund

Introduction

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) was set up by Parliament in 1994 to give grants to a wide range of projects involving the local, regional and national heritage of the United Kingdom. We distribute a share of the money raised by the National Lottery for Good Causes.

We allocate grants to projects in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and since 1994, the HLF has awarded £6.9 billion to more than 39,000 projects across the UK.

We are officially known as a ‘non-departmental public body’. This means that, although we are not a government department, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport issues financial directions to us and we report to Parliament through the department. Our decisions about individual applications and policies are entirely independent.

HLF is administered by the Trustees of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) which separately allocates grants to our national heritage, acting as a fund of ‘last resort’.

What do we do?

The Heritage Lottery Fund is the UK’s leading funder of our diverse heritage and the only heritage organisation that operates both across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and funds the entire spread of heritage – including buildings, museums, natural heritage and the heritage of cultural traditions and memories.

Our strategic framework for 2013-2018 sets our plans to deliver long term and sustainable benefits in response to the emerging needs of the heritage sector.  We describe the difference we want to make for heritage, people and communities through a set of outcomes. These outcomes reflect the full range of what we want to achieve and are drawn directly from our research into what HLF-funded projects have actually delivered.

We aim to support work designed to care for heritage and to help people to experience and enjoy it, e.g.:

• Improving the management and sustainability of heritage.
• Creating opportunities for people to learn about their heritage.
• Building repairs and conservation work.
• Encouraging more and a wider range of people to engage with heritage - especially people from communities who have not been involved in heritage before.
• Buying items, land or buildings which are important to our heritage.

Fast facts about HLF

• Over £36m has been awarded to almost 1,500 community heritage projects
• Nearly £4.5bn of Lottery funding has been awarded to more than 18,000 historic buildings, preserving them for future generations
• Almost half a billion pounds has been awarded to over 1,000 projects involving industrial, maritime and transport heritage
• More than 3,100 land and biodiversity projects have received over £1.4bn
• More than 1,100 museums and galleries have seen an investment of more than £1.8bn
• £590 million has been used to conserve our natural heritage, with over 72,000 hectares of land bought and restored
• Over £770 million has been put towards regenerating the UK’s historic public parks