Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of expanding access to Heritage Lottery Funding to the Overseas Territories.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund is able in principle to consider applications from outside the UK. However, the Fund’s Trustees must be satisfied that the project itself is of importance to the heritage of the United Kingdom and is accessible to the United Kingdom public, as the individuals who purchase National Lottery tickets. There are significant demands placed on funds by UK-based projects, meaning that the use of the National Lottery Heritage Fund funding for projects outside of the United Kingdom has been and continues to be a low priority, and in practice the National Lottery Heritage Fund has not funded projects outside the UK.

In its new Strategic Funding Framework, the National Lottery Heritage Fund has made a commitment to increasing its international work, with an ambition to see the UK’s heritage grow and learn by taking up opportunities to engage internationally. It will promote opportunities to build the capacity of organisations to make international connections and to benefit from doing so.