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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what funding she will allocate to National Portfolio Organisations through Arts Council England in (a) 2023-2024, (b) 2024-2025, (c) 2025-2026 and (d) 2026-2027.

As the Minister responsible for arts and culture, I regularly meet with the Arts Council England (ACE), who are an arms-length body of my Department. After careful consideration of the potential impact, my Department agreed with ACE to delay the announcement of its 2023-26 investment programme. I can now confirm the new date for the announcement is Friday 4 November and that this has been agreed with ACE.

I recognise that this delay caused some uncertainty for organisations in the short term but I am confident that this will be minimal as the investment programme begins on 1 April 2023.

Individual funding allocations to organisations in the Investment Programme are always a matter for ACE and all of these funding decisions are taken at arm’s-length from the government. The primary funding source for the ACE investment programme is non-ring fenced Grant-in-Aid provided by DCMS. As set out on its website, and in the ‘Addendum to the Guidance for Applicants’, ACE’s average annual budget for this investment round is £428 million, and it will receive a 2% uplift to the total budget compared with the 2018-22 investment programme. However, it is important to note that ACE uses other funding sources for its investments, for example Lottery funding.

The total funding allocated to organisations in the 2023-26 Investment programme will be set out in the announcement on 4 November 2022.

I commit to update the House with further details in due course.