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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what progress she has made on the allocation of dormant assets in the last 12 months.

To date, the Dormant Assets Scheme has unlocked over £1 billion of dormant assets which The National Lottery Community Fund distributes across the UK. DCMS is responsible for the English portion and recently announced that the next £350 million tranche of funding for England would be split equally between youth, financial inclusion, social investment and community wealth funds. The relevant Devolved Governments are responsible for their own portion.

To date, a total of £25 million has been allocated to the Northern Ireland Dormant Assets programme to build capacity, resilience and sustainability in the third sector. Over £3 million has been committed in FY24/25 to support smaller and underrepresented community groups to build their capacity. Discussions are underway regarding the deployment of the next phase of dormant assets funding in Northern Ireland, which is expected to be launched in due course.