Heritage Link, the umbrella organisation for a wide range of bodies involved in conservation and the historic environment, held its annual general meeting at Chelsea Royal Hospital in December when it reviewed its first year in existence.

Heritage Link was formed at the end of 2002 (see NSS, January 2003) with funding from the National Trust and English Heritage. It brought together 113 non-governmental organisations from the Ramblers and the Youth Hostel Association to Friends of the Earth.

The total individual membership of the various organisations amounts to 5.8million people, which is intended to make it a powerful lobbying group to champion heritage.

At the inaugural annual meeting on 12 December 2002, at which Heritage Link was formally established, three areas of activity were identified and three working groups were established to explore those areas. They were: funding; land use planning; social inclusion.

During the year the working groups met to identify areas that Heritage Link could best benefit voluntary organisations in the sector.

In partnership with the Heritage Lottery Fund, Heritage Link also carried out pan sectorial research into the role of the volunteer in the heritage sector.

They discovered that, overall, 48% of the population spend approximately four hours a week on voluntary work - that\'s 90million hours every week adding up to the equivalent of about £40billion worth of work a year.

That may seem a lot, but Heritage Link discovered the number of people involved in voluntary work is in decline.

To encourage more people to volunteer, they suggested in a report resulting from their research, \'Volunteers and the Historic Environment\', that there should be active networking of advice and support for best practice in volunteer management; that generic training programmes should be developed for volunteers; that there could be a central \'clearing house\' of organisations needing volunteers that people could use to see who they could help; that the benefits of volunteering to help the heritage sector should be promoted.

During the year Heritage Link also established an office at Albert Embankment, London, manned by Kate Pugh (Tel: 020 7820 7796), held four networking lunches, produced 18 editions of a fortnightly bulletin emailed to about 900 people, co-ordinated submissions to various governmental consultations, and actively raised the profile of Heritage Link by lobbying in government circles.

At December\'s AGM members also drew up a work plan to continue their activities in 2004.