In addition, the UK Government has recently published its Tailored Review of our performance and the Mendoza Review of Museums in England.  Both of these recommend new ways of working, including simplifying our grant giving processes and operating even more efficiently, getting the most value from National Lottery funding.

As we plan these changes, and adapt to a reduction in our National Lottery income, our Board has agreed that the next financial year 2018/19 – when we expect to distribute a substantial budget of c£190million – should be a transitional year, with some changes to our grant making.  This will help us rebase ourselves to ensure that income, commitments and resources are aligned.

We are also taking the opportunity to simplify the complexity of our grant programmes ahead of the new Strategic Funding Framework.

The following changes to our grant-making will take immediate effect (and run until our new funding framework opens in Jan 2019):

• There will be no new rounds of targeted programmes (ie Landscape Partnerships, Parks for People or Townscape Heritage) in 2018
• We will still be funding landscapes, parks and historic town centres in 2018, accepting grant applications via our open programmes, including Our Heritage and Heritage Grants
• We will fund Heritage Grants over £5m (major grants) in 2018, with decisions planned in April 2018 as usual (based on applications already submitted)
• We will not fund new ‘major grants’ (Heritage Grants over £5m) in 2019, so there will be no application deadline in 2018
• During the final quarter of the financial year – January to March 2019 – we will only be making Round Two awards and grants of up to £100,000. This will give time to prepare applications under the new Strategic Funding Framework arrangements

We are also planning new strategic funding to support innovation and new ways of working. We expect these initiatives to include a strong focus on urban parks and landscapes, with further details to follow in the Spring.

Applications under our new Framework will be open from January 2019.

The last application deadlines for our 2018/19 grant programmes (under existing framework) are:

• Parks for People, Landscape Partnerships and Heritage Grants Major Batch (>£5m)
  No deadline, we are no longer accepting applications under these programmes.  Please apply under open programmes for grants up to £5m.
• Townscape Heritage
  8 December 2017
• Heritage Grants (up to £5m) and Heritage Enterprise
  16 August 2018
• Resilient Heritage (£100,000-£250,000)
  27 September 2018
• Resilient Heritage (up to £100,000), Sharing Heritage, Our Heritage, First World War: then and now and Young Roots
  18 January 2019

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