Less than half of £1 billion made available by the Cultural Recovery Fund to date has been paid out so far, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).
The £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund, created by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in July 2020, was designed to support cultural, arts, and heritage institutions survive the pandemic.
Of the £1 billion funds made available, £830 million has been awarded to different organisations as grants and loans. However, only £435 million has been paid out so far.
Funding was determined by the department on the assumption that social distancing would remain until the end of March 2021. The current situation now exceeds this prediction, with the Prime Minister suggesting that social distancing may be required until October.
Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Committee of the Public Accounts said “the culture, arts and heritage sector has been one of the hardest-hit by the pandemic with many organisations now having been closed for nearly a year.”
The criteria for awarding funding included that organisations were financially viable before COVID-19 and had exhausted all other funding options, were culturally significant, internationally, or nationally, or were essential to the cultural fabric of a place or supported the government’s wider ‘levelling-up agenda.’
This has however led to criticism from local, smaller, arts, cultural and heritage sites, which do not meet this criteria.
The Department has not paid out any funding from its second phase of funding, amounting to £400 million.
Words by Millie Lockhart.
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