National Lottery Heritage Fund Business Planning Consultancy Projects

As National Lottery Heritage Fund business planning consultants, we specialise in preparing business plans for National Lottery Heritage Fund projects. This includes market assessments, option appraisals, governance and staffing, competitive analysis, visitor modelling, developing forecast trading profiles, preparing risk assessments, and evaluating plans. We also prepare business resilience plan for parks and heritage projects.

What helps us to deliver robust business plans for National Lottery Heritage Fund projects?

Our sister company operates CONKERS, a 120-acre woodland discovery and adventure centre, Kent Life, a heritage park in Maidstone and the Cotswold Country Park and Beach near Cirencester. They also reopened the Bass Museum as the National Brewery Centre, which they managed until 2022. This hands-on experience is of real benefit alongside our work on heritage and commercial business planning consultancy projects. We are more than happy to provide study tours of these attractions.

While we don’t prepare activity plans, interpretation plans or designs, we regularly work with activity planners, interpretation experts, architects and designers.

National Lottery Heritage Fund projects

We have worked on a number of exciting and challenging National Lottery Heritage Fund business planning projects, including:

• Shropshire Council: Ditherington Flax Mill Maltings, located in Shrewsbury, is a unique and internationally important site. It contains seven listed buildings, including the first cast-iron-framed building, considered the world’s first ‘skyscraper’. We prepared the business plan for the project, which secured funding from the Lottery
• Newham Council: Prepared a business plan and organisational and governance strategy to support a successful funding application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The project is focused on the transformation of Canning Town Old Library, Grade II listed, into a vibrant Heritage Centre which will incorporate an archive store, reading room, education and interpretation spaces and a catering offer
• Gladstone’s Library: Completed a business resilience planning project for Gladstone’s Library, a Grade I residential library in Flintshire, which incorporates an extensive programme of events, a chapel, café, accommodation and gardens
• The Kent Mining Heritage Foundation: Commissioned to carry out a strategic retail assessment to identify the way forward for retail offer at Kent Mining Museum. This was coupled with identifying practical hands-on operational improvements, which will help to optimise the Kent Mining Museum shop
• Knowsley Council: Commissioned to produce a business plan for Bowring Park to support a successful application to the Heritage Lottery Fund.
• Trafford Council: Working in a multidisciplinary team, Planning Solutions Consulting was commissioned to produce a business plan for Longford Park to support a successful application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund
• Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council: Updated the business plan and options review for the operational management and governance of Kirkleatham Walled Garden, which includes a café, events space and walled garden along with horticultural and catering training academies. The project was funded by the NLHF and other funds.
• Neath Port Talbot CBC: As part of an NLHF project, we worked in a multi-disciplinary team to carry out a market assessment and options (with supporting financial models) and to identify and evaluate new uses for Margam Castle (Grade I).
• Epping Forest Heritage Trust: We carried out a comprehensive feasibility study and assessment of the Trust’s activities to provide clear, practical recommendations on its services moving forward, with a focus on the visitor centre, which they manage and public engagement. A key remit of the Trust is education and learning across Epping Forest

Follow the link to find out about our National Lottery Heritage Fund projects.

We are commercial in our outlook and recognise the many challenges of developing and operating a financially sustainable visitor experience.

What our clients say

“Gladstone’s Library was delighted to work with Planning Solutions Consulting to identify and evaluate options to help build the financial resilience of our charity. Thanks to support from the Heritage Fund, the aim of the scoping project was to identify baseline information for the institution alongside recommended next steps for future planning. Richard and the team worked collaboratively with a range of other specialist consultants (including an archives consultant and heritage architect) to create and deliver a holistic approach to the three original project briefs, which was incredibly impressive and exactly what we were looking for. PSC were wonderful to work with and took the time to get to know the Library, our collections, building, and quirks. The team visited on numerous occasions and consulted with the Library’s staff team as part of their review so their work wasn’t completed in isolation. The final reports are excellent, informative, and practical with realistic options. We would highly recommend PSC and would be very happy to work with them again.” Andrea Russell – Warden at Gladstone’s Library

Top left image kindly supplied by Houghton Hall Park

Talk to us about your project

We enjoy nothing more than a good conversation about a new project, however early-stage or well-developed your plans might be. Whether you need a full business plan, a quick sense-check on an idea, or just want to know if we’re the right fit, we’re always happy to have an informal chat first — no obligation.