Cultural Heritage: Repairs and Maintenance

(asked on 6th September 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what financial support is available to help museums and other historic sites undertake upgrades or expansion projects.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 13th September 2021

Historic England, funded by DCMS, is the government's statutory advisor on heritage and tasked with protecting the historical environment of England by preserving and listing historic buildings, ancient monuments and advising central and local government. Historic England currently offers c. £11 million per year for capital works to heritage sites across the country, through their Repair Grants for heritage at risk.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund is an arms length body of DCMS and distributes both Lottery player funding and government funding. The National Lottery Heritage Fund has a range of grants open to both museum and heritage organisations from £3,000 - £5M, which includes grants for maintenance and capital projects.

National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England also offer support by distributing grants via the government funded Culture Recovery Fund which includes a significant allocation for capital funding to cultural and heritage sites. In 2021/22 £33.6 million is available through the Grants for Programmes of Major Works and Additional Repair Grants for Heritage at Risk schemes.

Investment is also being made in vital infrastructure, repair and maintenance work for museums.

The Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) will provide £18.8m in capital funding grants of between £50k-£5m for infrastructure, repair and maintenance work in regional accredited museums.

In addition, over the past three years, government has distributed £131m capital funding among DCMS-Sponsored bodies, including the national museums and galleries, to enable them to carry out essential estates maintenance and improvement works.

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