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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to Government grants statistics 2020 to 2021, published on 31 March 2022, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the Radio Policy 2021 Grant.

The Radio Policy 2021 Grant was a temporary scheme to help smaller commercial stations deal with the significant fall in revenues experienced due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on advertising and sponsorship income. The scheme enabled those stations that qualified to defray a portion of their transmission costs, and therefore to continue to broadcast.

The department sets objectives for grant funding when designing the grant scheme and allocates funding in accordance with those objectives. The department and its public bodies deliver all grant funding in line with the Government Functional Standard GovS 015: Grants.