ONE of the region's most popular museums is preparing a bid for £30m of National Lottery money to create storage areas for its treasures.

Staff at Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham, also hope to move the cafe and shop to make space for displays.

Museum officials had originally planned to submit a bid to the regional heritage lottery fund next June for £500,000

They hoped this would, in turn, attract £5m in other grants.

But it has now been decided to postpone the bid until 2003 and ask for more money.

Marketing officer Dr Anne Allen said: "The goalposts have moved in relation to the size of the project.

"So we need more time to prepare, as bidding for National Lottery funding is a totally different process than the bid we were originally preparing," added Dr Allen.

Some of the money will be spent creating a building for storage.

"The requirements of keeping antiquities in the 21st Century were not thought of when the Bowes was built," said Dr Allen.

"We have been making the best of a bad job, with treasures inadequately stored, and we hope we will be able to remedy that."

As part of a Government initiative, money will also be spent to create a mentoring scheme between the Bowes Museum and the Wallace collection in London.

People from the larger museum will work at Bowes to teach staff more about keeping and displaying its national treasures.

The Bowes is also to take advice from other museums, which have submitted bids to the National Lottery, in the hope of copying their success.