We want to create the greatest impact and benefit from our funding for the UK’s heritage.

Our strategic initiatives are a way for us to address long-standing heritage issues at scale, support coordinated cross-territory approaches and accelerate new ideas and innovations.

Over the life of our 10-year strategy, Heritage 2033, we expect to deliver various initiatives. The ones we’re working on right now include:

Heritage Places

We want to boost pride in place and connection to heritage across whole places rather than individual projects. Our aim is to make heritage integral to plans and approaches that are making local areas better places to live, work and visit.

In October 2023 we announced the first nine of up to 20 places across the UK where we’ll invest £200million:

• Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon
• County Durham
• Glasgow
• Leicester
• Medway
• Neath Port Talbot
• North-East Lincolnshire
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Torbay

Considerations for a Heritage Place application:

• core project activities must be located in one of our heritage places
• projects should be part of a wider ambition to improve or transform the area, supported by local partners and organisations
• projects should be collaborative and will need to demonstrate evidence of support from local partner(s)

If you are applying from one of our identified Heritage Places:

• contact your local team to get advice on your heritage project before applying
• Submit a Project Enquiry (for applications up to £250,000) for additional advice. For applications over £250,000 you must submit an Expression of Interest before applying.
• follow our National Lottery Heritage Grants guidance to prepare and submit your application
• start your project title with the hashtag ‘#HP’ so we can identify it’s a Heritage Places application

Find out more about our Heritage Places strategic initiative and explore our Thriving Places hub for place-based case studies, stories and blogs.

Integrated Landscapes

The UK’s natural heritage is in decline. We will support large-scale projects that revive landscapes, support nature recovery and enhance connectivity for people and wildlife. Working with partners including National Landscapes, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, National Parks, conservation organisations, communities and those that work the land, together we will put entire landscapes and habitats into recovery. We want to support abundant natural heritage, rich cultural heritage and healthy natural systems. By driving ambitious landscape-scale projects we will deliver a step-change in nature recovery over the next ten years.

We expect to launch this initiative in late spring 2024.

Nature Cities and Towns

Engaging with nature close to where people live is fundamental to our health and wellbeing. By supporting nature recovery in our cities and towns we can help nature thrive, increase people’s connection to wildlife and make places better to live and work in. We will support cities and towns across the UK, in partnership with others, to deliver urban nature recovery through thriving historic parks and green spaces.

We expect to launch this initiative in the second half of 2024.

Heritage in need and other opportunities and emergencies

We remain committed to flexibility and responding swiftly when required. This could mean supporting acquisitions of exceptional heritage, marking significant events or supporting heritage areas and organisations dealing with an unforeseen emergency.

We’re also exploring opportunities for targeted funding for heritage that is at risk and in need of conservation. Alongside funding discrete projects, we want to support organisations to build capacity, develop approaches to project planning and diversify income streams.

More to come

Our teams are working hard to develop these initiatives and opportunities and we’ll share further details as we have them.

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