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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to encourage an increase the number of annual visits to historic houses throughout the UK.

In 2018 historic properties responded to a VisitEngland survey of visitor attractions in England, indicating that there were approximately 70m visits to historic properties in 2017. Of these, the most popular types of historic attractions were historic houses, making up 43% of all heritage visits. VisitBritain use historic houses in their promotional material to promote our heritage abroad and incentivise visits to the UK.

VisitEngland also administer the £40m Discover England Fund which helps create innovative, bookable tourism product across England and markets them at international audiences. Products which focus on historic houses include the England’s Originals project, The Great West Way and the Explorers Road.

In addition, Historic Houses work in partnership with the GREAT campaign. The GREAT Campaign use images and events throughout their international marketing campaigns to stimulate tourism and project a positive image of British national heritage abroad.