Shortly before Christmas Geevor Tin Mine successfully overcame the final hurdle in its bid for a £3.4m funding package that will bring new life to Britain's most complete tin mining site. Having become a Scheduled Monument in 2005, Geevor was recognised by UNESCO as a key part of the World Heritage Site for the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape in 2006. The funding will be used to realise the potential of Geevor's unique heritage, the importance of which is now recognised both nationally and internationally.

The funding package will help Geevor and bring new opportunities to the local community. Trustees at Pendeen Community Heritage, the charity that manages Geevor for Cornwall County Council, recognise the need for properly paid year round employment, and the need for career structures that will help stop young people leaving the area, breaking the pattern of low wage seasonal employment in tourism and agriculture. The project sets targets to achieve these aims and already the increasing visitor numbers have led to recruitment. By next year there will 21.5 full time equivalent jobs at Geevor and visitor numbers will rise from almost 40,000 per year to 50,000. The wider impact on the local economy has been assessed at £10m p.a. indirectly creating another 11 full time equivalent jobs. "This is just a start" explains Bill Lakin, Chair of the Trustees of PCH. "The next phase will be to develop more underground access for visitors and give them the best underground experience in the UK. The target for the site is to achieve the status of the National Museum of Hard Rock Mining - there are three national coal mining museums already, and Geevor is the most appropriate site in the UK for a hard rock museum."

The new jobs created both directly and indirectly by the regeneration of the site and the increase in visitor numbers will begin to address the problems of high levels of multiple deprivation, low incomes, high unemployment and poor health relative to the rest of the UK in the Penwith district and areas surrounding Geevor identified by The Office of National Statistics report of July 2006 The money will pay for local craftsmen who will use their traditional skills to restore and conserve 19 derelict buildings on the site and create a new museum in one of the old engineering shops. "We want to make this not just the best mining museum in the country but one of the best small museums in the world" said John Negus, project officer for the works programme. The striking and innovative design work for the new museum is being undertaken by Gendalls: the Falmouth based design agency fought off competition from the leading museum design houses in the country to win the contract.

Bill Lakin concluded "In 2001 Pendeen Community Heritage won the management contract to operate Geevor and then, in 2004, Cornwall County Council extended the contract for another 10 years. One of the central elements of the tender submitted in 2001 was that Geevor had the power to transform the local area. This new funding will enable us to start to deliver this transformation."