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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what proportion of funds from Round 1 of the Culture Recovery Fund have been dispersed.

As of 8/7/21, 89% by value of all Round 1 CRF awards (from the loans, resource grants and capital grants) have been paid to date.

Payments through the Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) are typically made in multiple tranches. Final payment is typically made at the very end of the grant period, once activities and costs have been reported.

In both rounds of the CRF revenue grants programme, DCMS has been able to give recipients the flexibility to extend the grant period. For CRF1 awardees, they have been able to extend until 30 June 2021, and for CRF2 awardees until 31 December 2021.

As such, a significant number of CRF 1 awardees have only very recently concluded the grant period.

In addition to the above, payment schedules can be impacted by a number of factors, such as the provision of bank details and activity reports from applicants, as well as assurance processes undertaken by distributing arms-length bodies, in order to ensure best use of tax-payers’ money.