The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has £300million a year to give away and in May, with the launch of its strategic plan for the next five years, invited more people to seek a slice of it, which should be more good news for stone specialists.

It is encouraging more people to come forward with their own views of what heritage they value and their own contribution to its care in order to distribute equitably the money available for looking after and promoting great buildings, beautiful countryside, special objects and ancient traditions.

Speaking at the launch of the Strategic Plan 2002-2007, titled Broadening the Horizons of Heritage, chair Liz Forgan announced measures to open up heritage resources and sites to the widest possible audience, allow a broader range of heritage to be funded and simplify and increase access to funding.

"Heritage matters to the quality of all our lives," she said. "It tells us who we are. It adds an extra dimension to the regeneration of our cities and villages. It is an economic asset. It makes people happy.""Our plans for the next five years build on the foundations of the last five - but we have done some new thinking too. We will make it easier for people to apply to us by simplifying our processes and relaxing our partnership funding rules."

The HLF also plans to open regional offices. "We are moving decision-making and our operational teams to the places the decisions affect," said Liz Forgan. "We have listened to thousands of our applicants and our partners in the heritage world.

"We will continue to keep the faith with the world class heritage that the Lottery has done so much to rescue from decades of neglect. There is plenty more to do on that front."But if we are to build support for its future care we need to engage new audiences and broaden the heritage constituency by listening to new ideas about what of the past really matters to people today."

She also wanted to see HLF\'s grants distributed more evenly across the UK, with special attention given to those communities that have to date received least funding and fewest grants.

The network of new offices and development teams across the country would give HLF a physical presence in each English region, as well as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each supporting existing committees of local people who make decisions on the majority of cases.

These new regional offices are in Birmingham, Cambridge, Exeter, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Leeds. They will open this month (June).

The regional teams will play a key role in delivering the Fund\'s objectives, which include tripling the number of smaller grants (£5-50,000) made during the period of the new Strategic Plan.

New national grant programmes will include \'Young Roots\', to encourage young people to celebrate their heritage, and \'Landscape Partnerships\' to deal with countryside in plural ownership.

Other changes include:

providing funding for training to develop heritage skills among volunteers

reducing the previous restriction of support for works of art created within the past 20 years to 10 years

introducing support for projects which protect the \'Priority Species\' listed in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan

reducing the minimum levels of partnership funding required by applicants, with smaller projects able to provide whatever they can afford

lengthening the maximum period of support for revenue projects from three years to five

putting a new emphasis on heritage advocacy and publicity and so stimulating the debate about why heritage matters"