National Lottery Heritage Fund Grants: Conservation Management Plans

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The National Archives has talked to bodies such as the National Lottery Heritage Fund to make sure that they can make arrangements in future so that there is a single point of access, if you like, for these documents. As I said before, the issue is making sure that the owner of the intellectual property or the copyright enables that to happen. Physically, it is possible. The archives sector is discussing that, and Historic England is promoting the heritage information access strategy, which is designed to do exactly that and have one point of access.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, as we are marking this very month the 150th anniversary of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, now subsumed in the National Archives, can my noble friend follow up on what he said a few minutes ago, indicating that what have been destroyed are copies? Can we establish how many of the originals survive, and at the very least can a list of those—properly tabulated—be deposited in the National Archives?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

As I mentioned earlier, the fund has offered to compile a list of the 1,300 park and garden projects for which conservation management plans might have been produced, although it estimates that there are about 500 to 600. As I said, that list will be available to those who ask for it.