Millennium Commission

The Millennium Commission, a United Kingdom public body, was set up to celebrate the turn of the millennium. It used funding raised through the UK National Lottery to assist communities in marking the close of the second millennium and celebrating the start of the third. The body was wound up in 2006.

Composition

Set up in 1993 by the National Lottery etc. Act 1993, the Commission was an independent non-departmental public body.^{[citation needed]} Commissioners were appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister; the Chair of the Commission was, for most of its life, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and for most of its life a second government minister was also a Commissioner.^{[citation needed]} During Tessa Jowell's tenure as Chair the second Minister was Richard Caborn, as Minister for Sport, who preceded Jowell in the department by one day, and who left the department contemporaneously (when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister).^{[citation needed]}

Closure

The Commission was wound up in December 2006 and its role was transferred to the Big Lottery Fund.^[1]

One of 245 Millennium Greens created in England around the turn of the millennium

Examples of projects funded

The Commission invested over £2 billion in buildings, environmental projects, celebrations and community schemes. Funded projects include:

Black Country Urban Forest
Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne
Dundee Science Centre
Eden Project, Cornwall
Falkirk Wheel
Glasgow Science Centre
Winchester Science Centre (formerly INTECH)
Five Millennium piers for London River Services
Magna Science Adventure Centre, Rotherham
Millennium Bridge, London
Millennium Dome, London
Ceramica, a museum in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent about the area's pottery industry (closed in 2011)
The Millennium Forest for Scotland
Millennium Greens in cities, towns and villages
Millennium Point, Birmingham
Millennium Seed Bank, West Sussex
Millennium Stadium, Cardiff
National Centre for Popular Music, Sheffield (closed in 2000)
National Space Centre, Leicester
Odyssey Centre, Belfast
Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh
ReDiscover, Newcastle upon Tyne (joint venture with the Wellcome Trust and the Wolfson Foundation)^[2]
Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth
Sheffield Winter Garden
The Deep, Hull, an aquarium
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
A number of village halls and community meeting places

Commissioners

There were initially nine commissioners – two ministers, one appointed by the opposition, and six independents. The number of commissioners was reduced to five as the work of the commission decreased. The final members were:

Richard Caborn (Chair), Minister for Sport
Floella Benjamin, actress and author
Heather Couper, broadcaster and writer on space
Judith Donovan, health and safety commissioner
Michael Heseltine, former Conservative cabinet minister

Previous commissioners

References

^ The National Lottery Act 2006, section 16(1)(b); the National Lottery Distributors Dissolution Order 2006 (S.I. 2006/2915), articles 1(2) and 2 (as read with article 1(1) of the Big Lottery Fund (Prescribed Expenditure) Order 2006 (S.I. 2006/3202))
^ "£4.5m revamp for science centre". BBC News: England. 10 January 2005. Retrieved 30 March 2020.

External links

Millennium Commission website (archived 22 December 2006)

[1] The National Lottery Act 2006, section 16(1)(b); the National Lottery Distributors Dissolution Order 2006 (S.I. 2006/2915), articles 1(2) and 2 (as read with article 1(1) of the Big Lottery Fund (Prescribed Expenditure) Order 2006 (S.I. 2006/3202))

[2] "£4.5m revamp for science centre". BBC News: England. 10 January 2005. Retrieved 30 March 2020.

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