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During the earliest years of HLF’s distribution of funding, discussion of its grant awards was dominated by three questions:

1 1. Were the trustees allocating huge grants to the big heritage institutions and neglecting “grass roots” heritage?

2 2. Were some regions (usually a euphemism for London and the South East) getting a disproportionate slice of the lottery cake?

3 3. Were some heritage sectors doing rather better than others?

TABLE 3.2 Heritage Lottery Fund – distribution of awards by size of grant

Financial year	% by total value of awards going to grants of under £1m	% of total value of awards going to grants of £5m and over
2002/2003	35.9	33.0
2003/2004	37.4	26.3
2004/2005	36.6	28.8
2005/2006	39.7	28.7
2006/2007	40.8	25.6
2007/2008	44.0	21.7

Source: HLF Annual Reports

The government issues “policy directions” to the lottery distributors, steering them toward ensuring that their independent policies and grant criteria take full account of the government’s own policy. DCMS used policy directions to intervene on the first question, trying to ensure that HLF recognized that the heritage can be tangible (e.g., a church) and intangible (e.g., oral histories); that it is owned and supported by millions, not just an elite few; and that access to lottery funding must indeed be “for the many not just a few.”

The 1997 Act empowered Trustees to assist projects (revenue as well as capital) directed to increasing public understanding and enjoyment of the heritage, and to interpreting and recording important aspects of the nation’s history, natural history, and landscape. Similarly, responding to policy directions meant eventually that a much broader definition of “heritage projects” was accepted and small grants for small community organizations for what they considered to be heritage was encouraged and enabled. The impact of its intervention can be seen in Table 3.2, which shows that the percentage of grant money being allocated to smaller projects increased and the amount allocated to large capital projects fell.

The second and third questions were closely monitored by HLF themselves. With the coming of New Labour in 1997 and a wider definition of what heritage was, it became easier to ensure that grants were not skewed toward major museums or the most well-known heritage sites (Table 3.2). Grants could be mapped against population densities and “cold spots” identified. HLF also set up development teams in each region who actively helped potential applicants to reach the point where they could submit a proposal. In these ways HLF tried to ensure a fair distribution of lottery money back into the communities that had funded it.

The 1998 Act enabled HLF to “regionalize” by setting up 12 committees in the nations and English regions to which decisions (up to a certain grant size ceiling) could be delegated. It also meant the setting up of regional offices which helped HLF counter complaints that HLF was too London-focused, and not sufficiently in touch with grass-roots heritage across the UK. It also helped ensure a greater degree of fairness in geographical distribution, as discussed above.