The National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) are running a survey on their current strategy, and we urge as many members as possible to respond. The survey has two options: one for people interested in heritage and one for people working in heritage.

Many members will be aware that in 2017, the NLHF (‘the UK’s largest funder of heritage’) cut, without consultation, its dedicated stream of funding for places of worship. The effect of this is already being seen. As the Historic Religious Buildings Alliance report, ‘since 2017 there has been a substantial fall in the annual investment in Places of Worship excluding Cathedrals. In 2017 the amount invested was £28m, lower than any previous year [in this series]. This was the year that the closure of the ring-fenced Grants for Places of Worship (GPOW) programme was announced. Since then, the amount has fallen by almost two-thirds, to about £10m’.

As the Lottery state than in their 2019 consultation only 7% of respondents marked churches and places of worship as a funding priority, we encourage all our members to take this survey and to be a collective voice for churches.

The survey is open until midday on Monday 5 September.