PETERSFIELD Town Council has agreed to give one of the biggest grants in its history.

Councillors provisionally awarded £150,000 towards the £2.8m cost of turning the former Petersfield police station into a Victorian Justice Heritage Centre at their meeting on Thursday, November 23.

The grant for Petersfield Museum, will help unlock £1.3m from the Heritage Lottery Fund towards the cost of turning the Victorian police station into a state-of-the-art museum facility for the town.

But to gain the lottery funding, the £150,000 grant must be committed to the project by next month along with other grants, donations and funds raised totalling around £1.256m.

Before the meeting on Thursday, November 23 in the Town Hall Council Chamber, the grant application had been favourably looked upon by the council’s finance and general purposes committee at its meeting on Monday, November 20.

But it was left to the full council to approve the application.

Council spokesman Steve Field said the grant would be a capital grant and so have to be included in the council’s budget for next year.

He added that although agreed, the grant could be subject to budgetary restrictions.

In the grant application, museum finance trustee Jeremy Mitchell also set out a timeline for their ambitious project.

Serious building work starts in summer 2019, and a provisional opening date of March 2021 has been announced.