Funding the recovery

The insurance companies and loss adjusters have been very helpful during the recovery process and made interim payments to ensure we could achieve the targets we set. The collections insurers have provided a settlement, although this is unlikely to meet all the conservation requirements and some hard decisions will have to be made. There is still a lot of work to be done in completing the cleaning and conservation work in the large object store. The final settlement for the building work and re-instatement of the galleries will be made shortly and then we can plan for the full re-opening of all the galleries.

A bid was submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund for £50,000 to support the “Towards the New Kelham” project. This was successful and it has enabled the appointment of specialists to plan and manage the conservation work on the collection and contribute to the re-opening through consultation and project planning work.