Jim McMahon

The government implemented the first Integrated Settlements for Greater Manchester and West Midlands Combined Authorities at the start of the 2025-26 financial year, which includes cover for building retrofits.

For buildings’ retrofit, Greater Manchester and West Midlands Combined Authorities received the first allocation of their combined £302 million devolved retrofit funding in April 2025. This allocation draws from the Warm Homes: Local Grant, the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, and the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.

Oldham forms part of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

Together with local and community energy groups and other key stakeholders from devolved governments to mayoral strategic authorities, Great British Energy and the UK government will turbocharge support for local and community energy projects across the UK.

Great British Energy will work closely with Local Authorities to provide commercial, technical and project-planning assistance to increase their capability and capacity to build a pipeline of successful projects in their local areas.

Mayoral Strategic Authorities also have a vital role in offering local expertise with their communities and in July, Great British Energy awarded all 14 mayoral strategic authorities in England a share of £10 million in grant funding to roll out clean energy projects at the heart of their communities.

Under the Online Safety Act, in-scope services must protect all users from illegal abusive and hateful content, and children from abusive content where it does not reach the criminal threshold.

In October, the Secretary of State wrote to Ofcom and asked it to use all its levers to tackle antisemitic content online and hate speech more widely.

The government supports Ofcom’s intention to publish a report in December which will assess the impact of the Act’s duties so far. The government and Ofcom are carefully monitoring the impact of the Act.

The Code of Practice for Wireless Network Development sets out best practice guidance for mobile network operators and local authorities on deploying wireless infrastructure, including considerations for siting equipment.

It is to complement existing legislation and provide clear, practical advice to support all stakeholders involved in the deployment process.

We expect all parties to follow the principles set out in the Code of Practice, and all major mobile operators have committed to doing so. Concerns about compliance should be raised with Mobile UK, and we continue to engage with the sector in matters relating to the deployment of wireless network infrastructure.

The Online Safety Act requires services to tackle illegal content, including terrorist content, grooming content, and content which stirs up hatred based on religion or race. They must also protect children from certain forms of legal content, including hateful or abusive material.

Services are required to take proportionate measures to mitigate these harms, including where they are enabled by algorithms. These measures are designed to ensure user safety, particularly for children whilst protecting freedom of expression. The Act requires the Secretary of State to review and report to Parliament on the effectiveness of the regime 2-5 years after the Act is fully implemented.

The Government has ensured Ofcom has the resources it needs to deliver online safety regulation effectively, including its complaints and investigation responsibilities. £72.6 million has been allocated to Ofcom for its online safety functions and approximately 550 full time staff are working in its online safety directorate in 2025/26.

Ofcom regularly reports on its performance and activity, and the Government remains satisfied that it has the capability and capacity to carry out its complaints and investigative duties effectively. We will continue to engage with Ofcom to ensure resources remain proportionate to its remit.

Recent engagement between the Department and university sector has focused on improving the sustainability of university research, improving the Research Excellence Framework, strengthening research and innovation partnerships and implementing recommendations from the 2023 spin-out review to accelerate commercialisation.

The Department supports commercialisation with significant investment, including through the £280 million a year Higher Education Innovation Fund. Additional proof-of-concept funding of £40 million over five years helps researchers translate ideas into high-growth businesses, ensuring UK universities remain globally competitive in innovation and knowledge exchange.

The measures we have announced relating to ticket resales will protect consumers and improve fans’ access to live events, while ensuring that people have a safe and secure means to resell tickets. They will also ensure that revenue flows back into the live events sector, supporting our world-leading Creative Industries as set out in our Industrial Strategy.

The impact on those attending live events will be set out in an impact assessment to be published alongside the legislation to introduce these measures. We will legislate when parliamentary time allows.

The Gambling Commission, the regulator for the National Lottery and an arm’s-length body of DCMS, publishes annual data on National Lottery participation rates, including a breakdown by sex, age and region.

A regional breakdown of lottery grant recipients can be found on the National lottery grant database: https://nationallottery.dcms.gov.uk/data. Further analysis on funding is carried out by the twelve lottery distributing bodies, who are independent of Government.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport does not hold information on the value of artworks that may have been sold by local authorities since 2010, as local authorities are responsible for the management of their own assets, which are held and displayed in a variety of ways. The Museums Association provides clear guidance to the sector on responsible collections management and the acquisition and disposal of collections. These guidelines, endorsed by major sector organisations, prohibit financially motivated disposals of museum artefacts.

The government is committed to working collaboratively with councils, as co-funders of culture. As the government’s recent Pride in Place strategy makes clear, communities deserve vibrant public spaces, and the government is investing new money in shared community assets, including through our £20 million Museum Renewal Fund, supporting regional museums to improve public access to Collections.

The BBC is operationally and editorially independent of the Government. Employee remuneration is therefore a matter for the BBC, and the individuals themselves.

The BBC’s Framework Agreement sets targets for the make-up of its workforce by the end of the current Charter. This includes a target for 25% of the workforce to be from low socio-economic groups. In its Annual Report the BBC reports on its performance against this target, as well as its pay gaps, including the socio-economic pay gap.

As part of the next Charter Review, the Government will engage with the BBC and others to consider how to ensure the BBC thrives well into the next decade and beyond. This will include discussions between the Culture Secretary and the BBC on a range of important issues.

Please note that not all artworks owned by the UK government are in the Government Art Collection. 15,118 artworks are in the Government Art Collection (GAC). 8,250 of these are on display in public exhibitions and across the Government’s global estate. These works are seen by hundreds of thousands visitors each year, promoting British art and contributing to cultural diplomacy in over 125 countries. 6,868 are not currently on display; of these some will be awaiting conservation and many will be reserved for a display or exhibition loan. 156 artworks are currently on loan to public exhibitions in the UK and 23 are on loan to public exhibitions outside of the UK.

Under the new government the Government Art Collection has radically expanded its public engagement programme, sharing more of the artworks with communities through partnerships and by participating in local, national and international events. In 2025 the Collection was shown in Bradford for I AM ME, an exhibition curated by 125 young people seen by 22,000 visitors. In 2026 over sixty works will be shown at The Box in Plymouth, selected and co-curated by a group of young people. Since July 2024, 62% more artworks have been loaned from the GAC to public exhibitions.

An estimated value of the Collection cannot be provided. Like other national collections, the GAC is not normally commercially insured nor treated as a financial asset. Against a background of constant fluctuations in the art markets, current valuations of every work of art in the Collection cannot be maintained. By governing legislation the national collections held by DCMS-sponsored museums are held in trust for the nation by trustees, not owned by the Government.

In the 2023/24 financial year, reserves in the school system totalled more than £6 billion, and the total value of reserves for the further education college sector was over £1.6 billion.

The department supports the provision of nutritious food in schools to enable pupils to be well nourished, develop healthy eating habits and to concentrate and learn in school.

The Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014 regulate the food and drink provided at both lunchtime and at other times of the school day, including at free breakfast clubs, and are available here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/1603/contents/made.

Compliance with the school food standards is mandatory for maintained schools, academies and free schools. Alongside the school food standards practical guide, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-food-standards-resources-for-schools/school-food-standards-practical-guide. Our free breakfast clubs guidance includes examples of healthy breakfast offers to help support schools to provide a healthy, balanced breakfast offer to pupils. This guidance has been produced in collaboration with the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities at the Department of Health and Social Care.

Academy trusts are permitted to use a proportion of their funding to pay for central services for their schools. This can be more efficient and cheaper than individual academies running or procuring the functions themselves. Where trusts top slice for central services, they must be transparent by disclosing in their annual accounts the services they deliver centrally and the trust’s charging policy.

The ’Academy trust handbook’ sets out the requirements related party transactions (RPTs). The handbook requires that trusts must:

• Report all contracts and other agreements with related parties to the department in advance.
• Obtain approval for RPTs where the contract or agreement exceeds £40,000.
• Pay no more than ‘cost’ for goods or services provided by related parties.
• Agreements to supply goods and services are procured through an open and fair process.

The handbook is available in full at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academy-trust-handbook.

The department has also published a guide on managing conflicts of interests and RPTs to support trusts, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/related-party-transactions-information-for-academy-trusts/managing-conflicts-of-interests-related-party-relationships-and-related-party-transactions-good-practice-guide.

Education and training achievement rates are available in the ‘Further education and skills’ statistics publication, which is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/further-education-and-skills/2024-25#content-9.

The department does not hold data on the estimated cost of providing those placements in England.

Funding for students who withdraw from their studies during the academic year is reduced through the retention factor in the 16 to 19 funding formula. This has the effect of funding withdrawn students at 50% of their funding band’s rate. This recognises that there is a cost to institutions in delivering programmes to students who do not complete.

All children and young people should have every opportunity to succeed. However, educational inequalities exist across the country and at every phase of education, particularly for white working-class children.

These gaps, whether in Oldham or nationally, are not acceptable.

Through the government’s Plan for Change, we are tackling these inequalities. The department will invest close to £1.5 billion over the next three years on improving family services and early years education to close gaps.

The department is rolling out expanded government-funded childcare entitlements and creating thousands of school-based nurseries to increase the provision of quality childcare. We will fund Best Start Family Hubs in every local authority ensuring children and families needing support most, especially those from low-income backgrounds or with additional vulnerabilities, can access it. This includes building on the great work already done by Oldham’s seven family hubs funded in this financial year.

We are expanding free school meals to all children on Universal Credit from September 2026 and have delivered record increases to early years pupil premium.

This is alongside work to drive high and rising school standards, including regional improvement for standards and excellence attainment conferences with the North-West conference open to schools in Oldham.