Government U-turn reprieves £10m annual heritage fund grant

The government today said it would maintain the National Heritage Memorial Fund's grant of £10m a year – a week after the fund was told the grant was being slashed by 50%. The change of heart came after the fund's chief executive, Carole Souter, warned that treasures of the kind the fund had helped rescue in the past – including the medieval Mappa Mundi and the Flying Scotsman locomotive – could be lost to the nation if the grant was cut. The money to maintain the funding is understood to have resulted from an end-of-year departmental underspend. The grant will be increased to £15m this year and then cut to £5m next year. "I am very pleased that we will be able to meet the NHMF's £10m grant next year," the culture minister, Margaret Hodge, said. "It is an incredibly important fund that has helped save many important works for the nation." The cut would have come at a disastrous time for the fund, which is already heavily committed to grants including staged £10m payments to the National Galleries of Scotland and England for the Duke of Sutherland's Titian, Diana and Actaeon. Major applications are expected in the coming months, including from the Potteries and Birmingham museums for help in raising the £3.3m needed to buy the Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold .