Ros Kerslake, Chief Executive of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, has been awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to Heritage.

Ros Kerslake said: “I am very grateful for this award. It comes at a time when heritage is facing the greatest challenge in my lifetime, and I would like to pay testament to everyone in the heritage sector, and in particular my colleagues at the National Lottery Heritage Fund, who have worked so hard to respond quickly and effectively to the COVID-19 crisis, ensuring that important heritage is saved for future generations.

“Investing in heritage is hugely important – it creates jobs, supports wellbeing, tourism and local economies and makes our towns, cities and rural areas better places to live. It’s a great honour to work in a sector that makes such a positive difference to people’s lives.

“In May I returned to work following six months of treatment for Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. After a speedy diagnosis and excellent medical care from NHS staff at The Royal Marsden, I am thankfully now cancer free. Having faced these considerable challenges, this honour is a lovely reason to celebrate and feel positive about the future.”

During Ros’s time at The National Lottery Heritage Fund she has overseen more than £1bn of National Lottery funding awards to the UK heritage sector, including for Paisley Museum, Hull Maritime City, The Fitted Rigging House at Chatham Historic Dockyard, Bevis Marks Synagogue, Templemore Baths in Belfast, and the National Broadcast Archive for Wales. She has also led the transformation of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, strengthening its leadership role and innovation, and bringing in a new five-year Strategic Funding Framework.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, The National Lottery Heritage Fund launched a £50m Heritage Emergency Fund, awarding grants to 950 organisations across the UK affected by the crisis. Ros has also overseen the distribution of substantial Government funding to support organisations through the crisis – the £92m Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage and the £40m Green Recovery Challenge Fund, to support the nature and environmental sector.

Further information about Ros Kerslake

Prof. Joao Martins, coordinator of the IMPACTOUR H2020 project remarked:

"Ros Kerslake is currently one of the IMPACTOUR’s Advisory Board Members, whose contributions have been extremely helpful and of upmost importance to our work. On behalf of IMPACTOUR consortium we congratule our colleague Ros for this well deserved recognition and continue to enhance our ongoing collaboration.

https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/news/ros-kerslake-awarded-cbe-queens-birthday-honours