Heritage Council Scheme
Deadline for submissions: Friday 14th February 2025 at 5pm.
The Historic Towns Initiative aims to provide support to historic towns engaged in a programme of heritage-led regeneration.
Stream 1: €350,000; for capital works to repair and enhance the heritage of the town through heritage-led regeneration projects
Stream 2: €50,000; applications to deliver a heritage-led regeneration plan which will examine the existing heritage of a town and determine what conservation focused interventions are required.
The Historic Towns Initiative aims to provide support to historic towns engaged in a programme of heritage-led regeneration. We are particularly interested in projects that address residential vacancy in town centres, that propose the re-use of historic structures, and that can act as a demonstrator for future projects.
Each local authority is invited to apply in respect of one historic town (with an indicative minimum population level of 1,500 inhabitants). A town seeking to benefit from the HTI should possess significant cultural and heritage assets and have a distinctive sense of place. Historic towns include those of medieval and pre-medieval foundation, plantation towns, planned estate towns and those established around local industries.
The extent to which private owners and/or occupiers or community groups will bring and keep vacant or underused floor area in historic buildings in use (in particular residential use) and address dereliction and vacancy (30%)
The town’s track record to date in heritage-led regeneration, the extent to which the application fulfils the aims of the HTI, and is likely to make a significant contribution to the heritage-led regeneration of the town (20%)
The quality of the project(s) proposed (20%)
How the project would build resilience in the historic built environment of the town to enable it to withstand the effects of climate change (15%)
The presence of a vibrant and engaged community who would support the implementation of the Initiative (15%)
All information is accurate at the time of writing; however, we recommend visiting the individual websites of the funding organisations for the most current and up-to-date information on their specified schemes.