Our objectives

During the past year, the AHF made 17 loan offers (including extensions) totalling £4,251,218. We also awarded 133 project grant offers totalling £2,435,172, and two sector partner grants totalling £28,333.

A total of 53 grant offers were made in England under the Transforming Places through Heritage Programme during its final year of delivery. In total we have awarded £13,893,006 under this programme since 2019, to more than 240 projects. There is still strong demand for town centre and high street focused investments, and this is a fundraising priority we are taking forward into our new Strategy for 2023-28.

To continue to enable us to meet some ongoing demand in England, we were very pleased to be awarded a grant from Historic England, to begin in 2023/24. This grant of £417,151 provides for a support and advisory team and also an early-stage grants budget.

We were also grateful to commence a new three-year programme in Scotland, funded by Historic Environment Scotland, for a total commitment of £1,373,750.

It was another year of seeing incredibly ambitious and varied projects come forward for funding.

With much of the AHF’s loan capital committed, fewer new loan offers were made in 2022/23 than in recent years – however, a number of new loans were offered, and some projects required increases or extensions to existing loans. New Heritage Impact Fund loans included £200,000 for Delapre Abbey in Northamptonshire. The loan will support the cash-flow requirements of the charity as it develops the capital works to re-purpose the 19th- century Stables, Gardener’s Cottage and Lodge at Abbey into 16 individual units to be let out to well-being organisations. The project had also been supported by an earlier AHF development grant, which funded a masterplan for the site.

We also supported North-East Scotland Preservation Trust with a working capital loan, through the endowment fund, for just over £75,000 as that organisation further develops a number of projects in the region. These include the recently completed capital project at the former John Trail Bookshop, which is now a hotel, The Stag and Thistle. 

Governance changes during the year included the arrival of Ros Kerslake CBE as Chair in September 2022. Ros brings an enormous amount of experience in heritage-led regeneration, property, and public, private and third-sector funding, and has helped shape the organisation’s new Strategy for 2023-28.

Carole-Anne Davies, our trustee for Wales, stepped down during the year, and we are very grateful to her for the support she gave to the AHF’s work, not only in Wales but across the UK. To replace Carole-Anne, we appointed Menna Jones as our new Trustee for Wales. Menna has worked in the social enterprise sector for the last 30 years and was formerly Chief Executive of Antur Waunfawr, a social enterprise in North-West Wales for 27 years, until joining Bardsey Island Trust as the Development Manager for the island. Menna’s experience in managing and leading social enterprises, as well significant development experience in projects involving historic buildings, will be immensely beneficial to the organisation.

During the year we published, alongside the Department of Communities, a research report, on the potential for the increased utilisation of ‘heritage-enabled’ regeneration in Northern Ireland’s ‘mid-sized’ towns. The report, produced by Ruth Flood Associates, examined the specific needs as well as the potential for heritage-enabled regeneration to drive new approaches to revitalising Northern Ireland’s towns through the adaptation, reimagination and locally driven reuse of historic buildings. We are using the findings to make the case for new programmes within Northern Ireland that focus on this scale of settlement and some of the approaches recommended by the report, including increasing funding for housing schemes that involve the reuse of historic buildings.

The interim evaluation of the Transforming Places through Heritage programme was also produced to coincide with the end of the programme, the findings of which have been very encouraging. At the same time as evidencing the effective delivery of the programme by the AHF, the report found that the programme had already delivered significant impacts for high street and heritage-led regeneration. The report also provides evidence for the economic benefits of investing in charity and social enterprise-led projects, with the programme producing an economic benefit cost ratio of 1.92 (i.e. for every £1 invested in the programme, it returned £1.92) and a total benefit cost ratio of 3.33. We will be using these positive findings to make the case to government for further funding into programmes like Transforming Places through Heritage, particularly as the challenges facing heritage assets and high streets remain evident across the country.