.jpg)
English Heritage has benefited from people’s post-pandemic desire to get out and about, recording a 16 per cent rise in income in the past year.
Membership of the conservation charity reached almost 1.2 million, including 422,000 new sign-ups, according to its annual report and accounts for 2021/22.
Some of its 400-plus sites posted record visitor numbers, which is thought to be partly down to the surge in staycations in summer 2020.
English Heritage’s income was £116m – up from £99.8m in 2020/21. Membership income rose from £37.4m to £42.4m, while overall expenditure was up from £96.2m to £125.7m.
English Heritage was launched as a charity on 1 April 2015 to conserve England’s national heritage collection of sites, monuments and artefacts.
At its founding, the charity received an £80m grant from Historic England. It has been used over eight years to address urgent conservation defects, invest in new visitor facilities and exhibitions, and update the presentation and interpretation of smaller sites.
The grant has almost been spent, while a lifeline series of Covid-19 recovery grants has ended. The combination of the two presents English Heritage with a financial challenge in the coming years.
English Heritage chair Sir Tim Laurence said 2021/22 was a “year of learning to live with Covid-19”.
He added: “We and the rest of the world will be dealing with the financial impacts of the pandemic and of the war in Ukraine for some time to come.
“But I have every confidence in our ability to rise to the challenge.”
In 2021/22, English Heritage spent more than in any other year on conservation and maintenance, including £14.4m on core building and landscape and £12.2m on major conservation projects.
Staff numbers dropped from 2,245 to 2,117, while the charity’s gender pay gap narrowed from 10.3 per cent to 7.8 per cent.