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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to support the heritage sector.

Last December we published the Heritage Statement: One Year On which provides an update on our progress against commitments made in the Heritage Statement in 2017. These documents set out our priorities to support the heritage sector building on the strategy set out for heritage in the Culture White Paper. These documents are accessible on gov.uk.

To support the heritage sector we also provide Grant-in-Aid (GIA). In 2018/19 this included £91,607,000 for Historic England, £2,604,000 for the Churches Conservation Trust and £5,574,000 for the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

Likewise, over £8bn of funding has been supplied by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to around 44,000 projects from 1 April 1994 to 31 March 2018. In the last financial year this has included £757,835,822 to Church organisations, £3,004,154,443 to community and voluntary organisations and £2,622,698,437 to local authorities.