Published: Monday, 27th March 2017
Plans to upgrade the St Georges Guildhall Complex have been put on hold.
Ambitious plans to upgrade the St Georges Guildhall Complex including the installation of a new lift, works to the roof, improvements to the galleries and altered uses for other buildings on the site, have been put on hold. It's following a decision by the Heritage Lottery Fund at its national grant meeting not to support the project.
Cllr Elizabeth Nockolds, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Culture, Heritage and Health, said "We are obviously disappointed that our bid on this occasion was not successful. We have had excellent support from the HLF at a regional level in the past for The Walks, Greyfriars Tower, Stories of Lynn and most recently the South Gate. We understand from our Grants Officer at the HLF that demand was incredibly high for this round of funding, and the competition at this national level is very intense. The national scheme includes buildings projects but also covers landscapes, industrial, maritime and transport schemes. Only a small number of schemes that applied for funding were successful."
"We have received some very useful and constructive feedback on the proposal we submitted, which we will now consider in detail, before deciding what we do next."
Cllr Nockolds added: "We have had tremendous support from users and organisations in King's Lynn for this project and I am disappointed for them too. We had the same initial response from the Heritage Lottery Fund at national level for the Stories of Lynn project but still managed to deliver the project after developing a revised project. We will now work with our partners to identify how to move forward."