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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to ensure beneficiaries of the Museum Estate and Development Fund provide information that is politically neutral.

The Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) supports non-national, accredited museums across England by providing funding to address urgent infrastructure and maintenance backlogs that exceed standard day-to-day budgets. The programme strictly finances capital projects, such as water ingress, faulty boilers and crumbling roofs, thus ensuring that the physical buildings safeguarding the nation's collections are protected for future generations. The application itself requires strict technical and financial documentation, meaning organisations must submit costed condition surveys, project proposals, planning permissions, and RIBA Stage 3 plans, alongside robust risk registers, financial management strategies, and evidence of match funding. Because MEND focuses entirely on physical infrastructure, museums do not need to submit any details regarding their exhibition content or how it is interpreted.

Core operational matters like exhibition content and day-to-day curation fall entirely outside the scope of MEND. Arts Council England (ACE) does not intervene in these independent creative choices, leaving autonomy to individual museums. While funded organisations must align with the ACE Relationship Framework, this structure is explicitly designed to safeguard public investment while protecting artistic independence. Furthermore, as accredited charities or council-run entities, applicants must adhere to Charity Commission rules against partisan campaigning, thus ensuring that public funds are used solely to secure the physical future of the museum buildings themselves.