Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 improve availability of grassroots football facilities in Ashfield constituency.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to ensuring that communities across the UK benefit from high-quality sport facilities - including new and improved pitches, changing rooms, goalposts and floodlights - to help enable people to get active and build pride in place in local communities.
In 2024/25, the constituency of Ashfield received a total of £1,849,232 from DCMS’s Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities programme, primarily towards a new artificial grass pitch and changing pavilion at Sutton Lawn Pleasure Ground.
This programme is investing a further £98 million towards new and upgraded sports facilities across the whole of the UK in 2025/26. At least £400 million more will be invested in new and upgraded grassroots sport facilities between 2026 and 2030. DCMS is working with the sports sector and local leaders to develop plans for delivering this funding, ensuring that investment best serves the needs of local communities, in the areas which need it most across the UK.
Our delivery partner in England, the Football Foundation, plans its investment pipeline using Local Football Facility Plans (LFFPs), which are developed in partnership with local authorities in line with the needs of each community. The LFFP for Ashfield can be found at https://localplans.footballfoundation.org.uk/local-authorities-index/ashfield/ashfield-executive-summary/.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 promote UK tourism in other countries.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
DCMS works with the national tourism agency, VisitBritain, to champion visits to Britain to a worldwide audience with the aim of ensuring that the economic benefits of tourism are felt by all regions and nations.
To drive more inbound visits across Britain, VisitBritain launched a global screen tourism campaign ‘’Starring Great Britain’’ in January 2025. The campaign uses the country's rich film and television history as a hook to inspire visitors to explore diverse and often rural destinations. The launch was supported by a wider advertising campaign across the UK’s largest and most valuable inbound visitor markets including Australia, the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries, France, Germany and the USA.
The Government is committed to supporting the sector through the forthcoming Visitor Economy Growth Plan, which will set out a long term plan to increase visitor flows across the UK, boost value, and deliver sustainable growth.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether their Department has run any (a) recruitment and (b) internship schemes aimed to increase the number of people from underrepresented groups in the workforce in the last year.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
As set out in the Civil Service People Plan 2024 - 2027, we are committed to ensuring we attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds to create a modern Civil Service, now and for the future.
Civil Service recruitment must follow the rules set out in legislation within the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act (CRaGA) 2010 which outlines the requirements to ensure that civil servants are recruited on merit, via fair and open competition.
Going Forward into Employment (GFiE) accredits life chance recruitment pathways across government. GFiE pathways recruit people from a wide range of backgrounds into the Civil Service, including people from low socio- economic backgrounds, prison leavers, veterans, carers and care leavers. People recruited by GFiE develop skills, gain experience and build a career, contributing to the Opportunity Mission and to the wider economy.
In the last year, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport participated in the Care Leavers Internship Pathway.
In relation to internships in the last year, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport participated in the Civil Service Summer Internship Programme and the Autism Exchange Internship Programme.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what criteria her Department uses to choose sites for the tentative list for nominative UK sites to become UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
DCMS carried out a review of the UK’s Tentative List in 2022/23 under the previous government. The process and application forms are available online, outlining the information required for assessment and the need to demonstrate the potential for Outstanding Universal Value.
UNESCO encourages Tentative Lists to be reviewed and updated every ten years. We do not expect the next review of the UK’s Tentative List to take place until 2033 at the earliest.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if her Department will take steps to increase the number of venues offering curling rinks in England.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, should have access to and benefit from quality sport and physical activity opportunities. High-quality, inclusive facilities, including curling rinks, help people get active.
In June, we committed another £400 million to transform facilities across the whole of the UK over the next four years. This funding will be invested in new and upgraded grassroots sport facilities that promote health and wellbeing and remove the barriers to physical activity for under-represented groups. We are now working closely with sporting bodies and local leaders to establish what communities need, before setting out further plans on how future funding will be allocated across the UK.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of crime on inbound tourism to the UK.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
While DCMS has not made a specific assessment of the impact of crime on inbound tourism, we work closely with the Home Office, police and local partners to ensure that visitors to the UK have a safe and enjoyable experience.
Through our Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, we will place thousands of additional police officers and police community support officers in neighbourhood policing roles. This will provide a more visible and effective service to the public, with each neighbourhood having a named, contactable officer dealing with local issues, including robbery and theft from the person.
The Government recognises the serious impact that crime has on public safety, both in terms of the harm caused to victims and the wider implications for tourism.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 support public libraries.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Public libraries are funded by local authorities and each local authority is responsible for assessing the needs of their local communities and designing a library service to meet those needs within available resources. The government is committed to getting local government back on its feet. The final Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025-26 makes available over £69 billion for local government, which is a 6.8% cash terms increase in councils' Core Spending Power on 2024-25.
For Libraries specifically, the Secretary of State announced in February 2025 a further £5.5 million of the Libraries Improvement Fund for 2025-26 to enable library services across England to invest in a range of projects to upgrade buildings and technology. Nottinghamshire County Council has previously received £399,086 from this fund to support projects in a number of their libraries.
The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 requires the Secretary of State to “superintend and promote the improvement of the public library service provided by local authorities in England”. To assist this function the department regularly monitors and reviews changes to local authority library service provision, and engages with local authorities to discuss their respective library service.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, for what purposes their Department has used artificial intelligence in the last year.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
DCMS follows the UK Government’s AI Playbook principles on safe, effective and responsible adoption of AI, and works closely with DSIT as the “Digital centre of government”.
Any use of third party AI tooling is subject to multidisciplinary assurance prior to any use, including Cyber security, Data Protection, Knowledge and Information Management, and Technology assurance.
DCMS is in its early days in terms of AI usage and measuring benefits to productivity. In the past year the Department has used AI for the following:
Summarising large documents and emails
Analysis of large documents, drawing out key information and drafting reports
Drafting meeting notes
Generating draft content
Enhancing our departmental data science capability
Proof of concept of using AI large language models (LLMs) to analyse free text responses to a public consultation
AI produced data or drafts are manually reviewed. No decisions are made by the Department based on AI outputs, without manual checks and manual intervention.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what information they hold on the number of workdays that were completed remotely in their Department in (a) 2024 and (b) 2025 to date.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
We do not collect data on the number of workdays that were completed remotely.
Our London headquarters office occupancy is monitored via anonymised entry pass swipe data and is published on gov.uk on a monthly basis starting October 2024, and to date is as follows:
Oct-24 | Nov-24 | Dec-24 | Jan-25 | Feb-25 | Mar-25 | Apr-25 | May-25 | Jun-25 |
73% | 71% | 59% | 76% | 78% | 71% | 69% | 72% | 62% |
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps the Government is taking to support regional tourism boards.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Since 2022, DCMS has delivered significant reform of destination management devolving accountability to a regional and local level to promote regional growth. We now have a network of 40 tourism boards or Local Visitor Economy Partnerships (LVEPs) across England - including the Nottinghamshire LVEP, which received accreditation last year - and two Regional Destination pilots in the North East and West Midlands. In March, we announced a £1.35 million funding boost to help the Destination pilots attract even more tourists and investment to the UK over this financial year.