Culture Recovery Fund

(asked on 25th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many cultural organisations met all of the criteria for funding from the Culture Recovery Fund but were not awarded that funding as a result of an oversubscription for those grants in their area.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 15th February 2021

For the first round of the Culture Recovery Fund, in order to deliver the fund in time to support the sector, the Arts Council delegated fixed budgets to regional assessment panels to make decisions on the smallest applications.

When those panels were oversubscribed, and there were more organisations which met the criteria than could be funded, organisations were considered against the published Balancing Criteria and prioritised for funding accordingly. As such, a very small number of organisations (94) that applied to Arts Council England and met the primary criteria were not awarded funding on the basis of over-subscription, and how they compared to the Balancing Criteria. All of these applications were for less than £1m.

In general, success rates across Round 1 of the Fund were high, averaging 67% in the latest data we have.

Any unspent funds across the Arms Length Bodies will be allocated to the second round of the Culture Recovery Fund, which will deliver further support for cultural organisations during Spring and Summer 2021.

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