More progress

With our feasibility study concluded, we are now working on our application for a Heritage Grant which, if accepted, will give us most of the funding we need to move on with the project. The first step has been to complete an online 'project enquiry' which has required us to provide the Heritage Lottery Fund with a lot of detail about our aims. That 'enquiry' form has been accepted and was followed by a positive meeting involving myself, Janice Brockbank from the Society's working group, and our new Lottery officer Antonia Canal in Lancaster. We confirmed our intention of submitting a Heritage Grant application by the end of May. If successful, this will usher us into a two-stage process in which we will work closely with the HLF to development our project in fine detail, with funding supplied by the HLF, and if that stage is deemed satisfactory the HLF would release the rest of the funding to allow us to go ahead and make an offer to by the house and carry out the work. We will be required to contribute at least 5% of the total ourselves and we will therefore be looking at additional funding sources.