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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions she has had with (a) internal and (b) external stakeholders on the Crown Works Studio project in Sunderland.

The recently published Creative Industries Sector Vision sets out the Government’s ambition to maximise the potential of the creative industries. It details our plans to grow these industries by an extra £50bn and create a million extra jobs by 2030, and build a pipeline of talent and opportunity for young people through a Creative Careers Promise. The film and television industries play an important role in the wider creative industries.

My department continues to work closely with its Arm’s Length Body, the British Film Institute (BFI), to ensure a wide range of funding and initiatives are available to support the film industry. This is in addition to the UK-wide screen sector tax reliefs, and the UK Global Screen Fund which will invest £28 million in the international growth of independent screen companies across the UK. The BFI produces the Screen Business Report, which assesses the impact of the tax reliefs across all nations and regions of the UK.

The £28.4 million Create Growth Programme (CGP) is supporting creative businesses to attract private investment through a combination of capital, business support and investor capacity building. It currently covers six regions in England, including parts of the North East of England.

The British Film Institute also launched their skills clusters programme in April, committing £8.1m of National Lottery funding over 2023-26 to support the development of six regional skills clusters across the UK. The funding focuses on establishing localised support for skills development and training, building on existing production infrastructure, with the aim to develop local crew bases and create new opportunities for people from underrepresented backgrounds to pursue careers in the sector. Screen Yorkshire, Liverpool Film Office, Screen Manchester, and North East Screen have partnered together, under the name ‘Screen Alliance North’, to jointly lead the ‘North of England’ cluster - which has been awarded £2.3m for 2023-26.

I am aware of the Crown Works studio proposal in Sunderland and I look forward to continuing my engagement with stakeholders to hear more about this project.