Hawkesbury Heritage owners have a new window to apply for council money to keep their old buildings standing.
The 2026/2027 round of the Hawkesbury Local Heritage Assistance Fund opened this month, offering grants to residents who own heritage-listed properties within the Hawkesbury Local Government Area and need help covering repair or maintenance costs.
The fund works on a matched basis. For every dollar a homeowner puts toward an eligible project, the council will put in a dollar of its own, up to a cap of $5,000 per project. There’s some flexibility built in too — if an applicant can show the work is urgent and they genuinely can’t stretch to a co-contribution, the council may fund the project without one.
Past recipients give a sense of what the money tends to go toward. Some have used it to stabilise slab barns that were starting to lean or crumble. Others have replaced rotting timber verandas on heritage homes, or patched up gutters that had been quietly rusting through for years.
Council has set aside a pool of funding for this round, and it won’t be handed out first-come, first-served. Applications will be assessed on merit — how urgent the repair is and how much difference the funding will make to preserving the item long-term.
Applications close on Friday, 21 August 2026. Forms and full guidelines are available now on the council’s website at https://www.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au/plan-and-build/heritage/hawkesbury-local-heritage-assistance-fund.