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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, on what date applicants to the Arts Council England administered Cultural Recovery Fund who applied for less than £250,000 in support will receive detailed explanation for the reasons that their application was unsuccessful.

Each arms length body, in this case Arts Council England, has the delegated authority over allocating grant funding.

Their decision-making processes have been designed to balance limited resource with the urgent need to award funds, and process a very high number of applications, as soon as possible. This means that they do not have the resources to provide tailored feedback to applicants who applied for grants of under £250k. These applications were assessed and considered within area-based panel meetings, with recommendations passed on to a National Investment Panel for final decision.

We know that some applicants will be disappointed with the outcome and both the Arts Council and DCMS will continue to do all we can to support creativity and culture in England. Arts Council have published resources on their website both for organisations and individuals which include alternative sources of support and wellbeing resources.