THE HERITAGE LOTTERY FUND

  I am sorry to be late in responding to your request for a memorandum about the Heritage Lottery Fund. Our response under the four headings you gave in your letter of 14 May is as follows:

The role of your organisation and its relationship to the Heritage Lottery Fund, including, if applicable, separate information on the role of the organisation as an applicant for funds as opposed to an advisory body

  The British Library is the major adviser for library and archive publications. It is also a project monitor. The Library is eligible to apply for HLF funds but the advisory process and the application process are dealt with by separate departments. In no circumstances has the Library been asked to judge one of its own applications. The Library also responds to requests for advice from HLF on policy matters.

  The levels of remuneration paid to the Library for the advice it supplies approximates to the costs of supplying that advice, except in the case of complex applications where the cost of supplying advice almost certainly exceeds the income received in return. The Library therefore provides a subsidised advisory service.

The distribution of funds by the Heritage Lottery Fund, its criteria for considering applications and its procedures

  The Heritage Lottery Fund has achieved a great deal since its establishment in 1995. It has coped with an enormous and unpredictable demand for funding, and has had to adapt very rapidly as the Lottery has evolved. However, our experience is that it is comparatively slow and bureaucratic (as compared, say, to a private foundation). It has had inadequate machinery for dealing swiftly with smaller applications. It may seek from applicants vast amounts of information that one suspects may not be of immediate relevance to the assessment process.

  The HLF has recruited staff from the museum and built-heritage sectors and tried to apply terminology and practice relevant to those sectors to all areas for which it has responsibility. Until recently, it has lacked the internal expertise necessary to judge the value of the information presented to it by assessors in the library and archive sector.

The impact of the heritage Lottery Fund on the heritage sector with which your organisation is concerned

  The impact on libraries and archives has been less marked than in other areas. Neither HLF nor the sector have sold themselves to each other; there have been relatively few applications and the success rate has been skewed by one or two major awards (eg Churchill papers) and partly because the sector has been slow to realise the opportunities; the sector is only now beginning to develop national strategies and in this regard we welcome the appointment of a Policy Adviser for the sector; partnership funding is increasingly difficult to find and there is more competition for what funding is available.

Any proposals or recommendations relating to the future work of the Heritage Lottery Fund

  Large and complex applications are costly for applicants and the new two stage process which will give a steer at a comparative early stage is welcomed.

  The HLF should take account of emerging national strategies within the library and archive sector, in areas such as: preservation (being developed by the National Preservation Office); archival needs (set out in the recent PRO report "Our Shared past: an Archival Domesday for England"); retrospective catalogue conversion (reported by Philip Bryant in "Making the Most of our Libraries" British Library Research and Innovation Report 53, 1997).

  The HLF should develop a mechanism for dealing with small applications in conjunction with existing public funding bodies to make the best use of all available resources and advice and to reduce bureaucracy.

  The HLF should ensure that it has sufficient internal knowledge to deal adequately with applications from any sector to whom it intends to award funds.

  The HLF should ensure that advisers are adequately remunerated for the advice they supply.

July 1998