Introduction
The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) is boosting the fund for Restoration Village, setting aside an extra £1.9 million to be spent on some the 21 featured properties.
This award will allow for both a main prize for the winner and a series of smaller planning grants up to £50,000 for the projects, short-listed for the final, that require funding to further plan their projects. This means even more buildings featured will have HLF support. Additional funding will be raised by viewer votes and other donations.
HLF has been a supporter of the BBC’s Restoration since the first series, awarding a massive £5.5million in total to the winning buildings – the Turkish Baths at Victoria Baths in Manchester, and the Old Grammar School and Saracen’s Head in Birmingham.
The announcement comes as the first phase of restoration at Victoria Baths gets underway while the Old Grammar School and Saracens Head is due to re-open in early 2008.
In addition, no fewer than 24 other buildings that were featured in the previous two series of Restoration have developed their plans and won HLF funding to make them a reality. In total, this amounts to an additional £33million allocated by HLF to other Restoration projects.
