As you may have seen in the Express & Star over the weekend, the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has agreed to support our £10m funding bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for BCLM: Forging Ahead by welcoming our bid for £6m of Local Growth funding to support the scheme (Local Growth funding is typically awarded to projects that are seen to be of benefit to the local area and economy).
At a total project cost of £21.6m, we still have plenty of work to do on securing the rest of the funding but as I hope you’ll agree, this is fantastic news for the Museum and only strengthens our bid to HLF – which is by no means guaranteed. We will submit our first round funding bid to HLF in December and we find out whether or not we have been successful in the Spring.
Until then, please keep a look out for further updates about Forging Ahead in the next edition of The Cantin Patch, due out mid-November.
What’s next?
- Tue 1 November – LEP have agreed to fund if HLF is successful
- 1 Dec 2016 – We submit our HLF bid
- April 2017 – We hear if HLF successful
- April 2017 – November 2018 – Development Phase – for doing full research on all buildings, sorting out groundworks etc, building visitor cente commences and cast-iron house is moved
- Dec 2018 – submit HLF bid round 2, if successful building commences as soon as possible. Expected to take three years before project completion.