We have solicited the Architectural Heritage Fund to lead a £5million partnership project to increase the capacity of community-led trusts looking after built heritage across the UK.

The project aims to increase capacity building activity within the sector and offer early-stage project development funding. The project also aims to encourage inclusive partnerships as part of stronger place-based working in their locality.

We use our solicitation power only where it is clearly the most effective way of achieving one of our strategic objectives. In this case, soliciting applications was identified as the most effective way of achieving the following four strategic objectives:

• the funded organisation will be more resilient
• heritage will be in better condition
• the local area will be a better place to live, work or visit
• a wider range of people will be involved in heritage

The solicitation process included issuing a brief giving overall aims for the project. Over three years, the project would:

• produce evidence of capacity growth in terms of trust organisational development, based on a scale of local infrastructure capacity
• develop trusts from being able to restore and manage an initial asset to creating solutions for a portfolio
• develop and increase trusts’ local partnerships to widen the range and diversity of stakeholders
• demonstrate collaboration with other sector support organisations

The project would target funding using criteria guided by the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s place-based approach, allowing support to go to places identified as having some of the greatest heritage and community needs, opportunity and potential.

An application was solicited from the Architectural Heritage Fund and was awarded by our Board of Trustees.

The applications were made under the National Lottery Grants for Heritage programme and assessed against the solicitation brief.

As a result of this solicitation, the following grant was awarded, totalling £4,999,143:

Architectural Heritage Fund

Brief project description: The three year grant will enhance the Heritage Development Trust programme to create a new multi-level tiered model of capacity building. With the objective of allowing trusts to be eventually self-sustaining, it will allow trusts to gain in-house skills, build partnerships and take on more properties. A programme of Project Development and Viability grants will accompany Heritage Development Trust support to allow active project development.

Heritage Development Trusts are organisations that act as multi-building developers, build community-based partnerships and are entrepreneurial and not-for-profit.

Grant awarded: £4,999,143