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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, to what extent his Department assessed (a) the size of an organisation's cash reserves and (b) combined wealth of individual backers, when awarding funds from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

For the first round of funding in the Culture Recovery Fund, all organisations applying were asked to detail sources of income and levels of restricted and unrestricted reserves, to help the delivery bodies understand the financial position of each applicant up to 31 March.

Applicants were also asked in their application to detail how Covid-19 had impacted financial viability (including how they had exhausted all other reasonable options such as viable alternative options for commercial, contributed and philanthropic income, and using their reserves/resources), and therefore why a grant was necessary.