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 to increase the number of post-production film and tv industry jobs in the UK.

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. As part of this, it will be important to expand career opportunities in post-production film and television.

The Creative Industries Sector Vision sets out a range of interventions across education, skills and job quality to achieve this. The forthcoming joint Department for Education and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Cultural Education Plan will support the provision of high quality cultural education for all school-age children, including careers advice and skills development. This will provide young people with a window into the sector, and access to important foundational skills.

Strengthening talent pipelines for young people is also a priority. This will be delivered through our Creative Careers Programme, 14 new creative Local Skills Improvement Plans across England announced this summer, two new creative T-Levels rolling out in September 2024, and multiple national and regional opportunities to participate in digital and creative Skills Bootcamps.

These interventions complement the investment the sector is already making on skills, including the BFI’s £9 million National Lottery funded ‘Skills Clusters’ which will support skills development and training across the UK; ScreenSkills’ £19 million Future Film Skills Programme which has helped over 119,000 people progress in screen careers since 2018; and the work of the DCMS-funded, world-leading National Film and Television School.

Following the publication of the BFI’s Film and High-End TV Skills Review (2022), industry has set up the UK Production Skills Task Force for the Screen Sector to produce an industry-led response to the review. This will include supporting and delivering an action plan to address the skills shortages, gaps, and related workforce challenges in the sector over the next 5 years. Following on from the BFI's Skills Review, the BFI are now conducting a scoping study of the skills needs in the UK's animation, post-production, video games, and VFX sectors.