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 with Cabinet colleagues to encourage local government support for arts and culture in Harpenden and Berkhamsted constituency.

The Secretary of State has a range of discussions with Cabinet colleagues across the whole of her portfolio, and DCMS officials regularly discuss support for arts and culture with their counterparts across His Majesty’s Government.

In last month’s spending review, the government committed to providing an additional £3.4 billion of grant funding to local government in 2028‑29 compared to 2024‑25. This equates to an average annual real terms increase in overall local authority core spending power of 3.1% across the spending review period. Whilst individual decisions on how to invest departmental resources will be determined in due course, there will be significant investment into Arts and Culture over the spending review period, including to Arts Council England (ACE) who will continue to support local arts programmes and projects across the country.

In the 2024-25 financial year, ACE provided over £22k of funding to arts projects in the Harpenden and Berkhamsted constituency. Details of this funding can be found on the ACE website here https://culture.localinsight.org/#/map