Hunch. Both big heritage funds said in August that public grant money cannot be used to help a council sell public property, and nothing since has changed that.
The heritage fund market resolves YES if by the end of 1 December 2026 the National Heritage Memorial Fund or the National Lottery Heritage Fund publicly agrees a grant to buy the bust, in a statement by the fund, the council, the museum or BBC Scotland published by 8 December. It resolves NO if no such grant comes, the August refusal without change counts as NO, and the funds' own news pages decide with BBC Scotland and The Guardian to confirm.
We looked for cases where a UK museum or gallery, other than the national and university museums, said it would raise the money to buy an artwork worth £1m or more that the UK had stopped from leaving, and so got extra months to do it. We found 14 such times since 2006 and kept the ten most recent, from 2012 to 2024, and checked whether the buyer paid before time ran out.