Half of the historic buildings owned by private individuals. Listed or registered, these buildings are part of the national heritage and the 1913 law on historic monuments, heritage built into the Code, provides the financial support of private actors to help their conservation.
Owners who wish to make a historic monument restoration work can get state funds through the Regional Directorates of Cultural Affairs (DRAC) and regional and general councils. The granting of funds by the first condition for most of the time the agreement of local authorities.
Restoring an identical
The first step is to validate the work projects by the DRAC. An architect of the buildings in France will check that it is a restoration project at the same rather than maintenance and repair ordinary.The architect must also approve the selection of the contractor responsible for carrying out the work. It must have certification awarded by Qualibat every five years.
Permission to work obtained it takes on average within six months – the owner can take the steps to apply for funding from the regional conservation of historical monuments, decentralized service of the Ministry of Culture responsible for allocating the funds allocated each year by the state. The need to restore or the urgency of intervention, will be crucial in the decision. The DRAC Ile-de-France added that the progress of the project is also examined.Hence the importance of presenting a solid case together with plans, photos, specifications, implementation schedule work …
The association La Demeure Historique, one of the two organizations accredited by the state, began to identify in a report the amount of financing obtained by the private owners of historic buildings through co-financing public (state and region). The latest figures available are for 2008 and set the total amount of funding allocated by the DRAC to 20.5 million euros, 15 million for listed buildings and 5.5 million for the monument included in the supplementary inventory.An amount up slightly from 2007 but well behind the 30 million allocated in 2000.
Isabelle de Charnace, following the request for public subsidies for La Demeure Historique association, said the 1913 law provides for the payment of a grant of up to 40% of the total work to a listed building and 15 % for a monument inscribed payday loan. "In practice, it is far from reaching these numbers consistently, but it is important to get not even one euro of subsidy," said she. The downstream of the DRAC has a twofold consequence. The first is tax because it qualifies for the tax deduction of 100% of the work. Without subsidies, the owner has the right to deduct only half.The second is that it generally serves as a passport to get help from the regions and departments.
Regions and departments
Figures published in the report of La Demeure Historique reveal a variety of situations from one region to another. In 2008, 11 of the 21 regions surveyed (the data on Corsica and overseas territories are not included), have paid any subsidy. In 2010, the number rose to 14. According to the association, this disengagement is due to the fact that the regions consider that they must give priority to financing the public patrimony. They also prefer to intervene to save the monuments unclassified through the Heritage Foundation.According to the latest figures only 55 operations have been financed by the regional councils in 2008, against 197 in 2005.
The total amount of aid allocated, however, is virtually unchanged: 3.310 million euros in 2005 and 3.206 million euros in 2008. The award criteria are also very different from one region to another, some requiring the opening scene to the public, participation in events, or the mere possibility of admiring the monument from the public way. In 2008, the regions with the most generous private monuments were Auvergne (2 million for 28 projects), Britain (547,000 euros for 19 projects) and Haute-Normandie (340 000 euros for a project).
As for general tips, 28 of the 87 who responded to questionnaires (out of 91 respondents) did not grant any subsidy to private monuments.Four departments have even enacted regulations removing the ability to finance operations of tells. They are still more generous than the regions participating in the total funding of 475 operations for 6.734 million euros. An amount in free fall over the year 2003, when county councils were given more than ten million.
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