This section describes ways of appointing the lead professional adviser you will need to help you carry out a grant-aided repair project.
Complying with the Procurement Regulations
If you are applying for grant from us and you have already appointed a building surveyor or architect with conservation accreditation, you will need to check that the way you appointed your professional adviser meets the procurement regulations as set out below. We will discuss this with you during the assessment of your application.
If you have not already appointed a building surveyor or architect with conservation accreditation as lead professional adviser for your project you should do this following the relevant procurement process set out below. Please remember that your architect or building surveyor must have conservation accreditation. We will discuss this with you during the assessment of your application.
By the time you start your project you will need to have appointed professional advisers with the appropriate ability, experience and conservation knowledge, as set out in the English Heritage Report (this is one of the conditions of the grant contract). Once you have appointed a lead professional adviser for the project, you can ask them to help you appoint any other advisers set out in the Report. They can also advertise and seek tenders for the building works on your behalf. You should have a written contract with each of them.
- Small professional appointments (up to £10,000) are unlikely to need to go through a tender process. But it will be necessary to demonstrate good value for money. This could be done by obtaining three quotes, verbal or written.
- For professional appointments worth over £10,000 and where total public grants are no more than 50% it will be necessary to demonstrate good value for money by obtaining at least three written tenders. We recommend that you follow the process set out below.
- For projects where one or more of the professional appointments is likely to be above £10,000 and total public grants are more than 50% we would recommend that you appoint your main professional adviser following an advertised tender process using the documents attached here. This will involve advertising for tenders, evaluating the tenders received and then awarding the commission as set out in our summary guide to the procurement process. All places of worship grant recipients can place an advert free of charge using the service available on the Churchcare website. This is run by the Church of England but is open to congregations of any denomination or faith receiving grant. If you have received a grant from one of our other schemes a step by step guide to placing an advertisement online is available. Further guidance and model documents are available on the right hand side of this page.
- For a handful of very large projects there is a further requirement to advertise in the Official Journal of the European Union. You are therefore advised to check the detailed guidance and current thresholds for publicly funded works to be found on the Cabinet Office website. At the time of writing the threshold was £173,934 for projects where total public grants are more than 50%. If you think that your project is one of these please contact your regional office.
Please note that this applies to appointments of professional advisers where it is expected that they will work on several phases of work to the same building within a five year period. This is called aggregation. So where you expect several phases, you should add up the total value of fees for advisers of the same discipline (e.g. Architect) for the whole five year period to find out which threshold applies. Where the expected value of fees is just below a threshold you may want to follow the process for this threshold in case the cost does increase.
The RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) and RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) provide guidance on appointing an architect or building surveyor – visit their websites at www.architecture.com and www.rics.org.
You should keep records of the procurement process so that you can show how you have appointed the professional advisers. We may ask you for details of this.
Please see the documents on the right hand side of this page for further guidance or phone your contact in your English Heritage office.
