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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the competition for the UK City of Culture enables all participants to enhance their cultural offer.

The Government’s approach to a future City of Culture competition will be announced in due course.

The current application guidance for the UK City of Culture competition already allows towns to enter. We keep under review our competition criteria feeding in lessons from previous rounds to provide the best support to each bidding place.

Towns have great potential to benefit from culture driven development.