Only half of culture funding paid out so far

Of the £830 million grants and loans funding awarded to the culture sector so far from the DCMS Culture Recovery Fund, only £495 million has been paid out.

The UK’s museums, galleries, cinemas, music venues, nightclubs, theatres, arts centres and heritage sites were required by law to close their doors to visitors on 23 March 2020 when the UK entered the first national lockdown. Without targeted support, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport expected large scale financial failures across the sector as organisations ran out of money around the end of September 2020.

The Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) comprised a mixture of revenue grants, repayable loans and capital grants, targeted at different groups of organisations. Through the fund, the government sought to support the survival of 75 per cent of the organisations in the sector at risk during 2020-21.

The National Audit Office reports that, from the £1.57 billion of overall funding, DCMS gave responsibility for awarding £1 billion to four arm’s-length bodies in a first phase of funding: Arts Council England; Historic England; the National Lottery Heritage Fund; and the British Film Institute. The ALBs ran their own, mostly separate, competitions to award funding.

By 19 February 2021, the ALBs had awarded £830 million of the £1 billion funding, with £495 million paid out to recipients. The ALBs have until the end of March 2021 to award all funding although these can mostly be distributed and used by recipients beyond March 2021. DCMS has not yet paid out any funding from its second phase of funding, totalling £400 million, which it announced in December 2020, with decisions scheduled to be made in March 2021.