Rachael Maskell – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rachael Maskell on 2016-04-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to ensure that regional museums and galleries are adequately funded.

Mr Edward Vaizey

Councils have almost £200 billion to spend on local services, over the lifetime of this parliament. It is for each local authority who know their area best to decide how to allocate its budget to provide museum services to its communities.

In addition, through the Arts Council England, DCMS has increased funding for 21 Major Partner Museums Networks (130 Museums in total) from £20.3m to £22.6 million over 2015-2018. Regional museums can bid for funds from ACE’s £10 million per year Resilience Fund, and for lottery funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. We are also investing millions of pounds to boost local and regional museums, for example, £5 million towards a new South Asia Gallery at Manchester Museum and £2.5 million to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.

As announced in our Culture White Paper, we will conduct a wide-ranging review into the museums sector that will examine local and regional museums, as well as Government-sponsored museums and the museums infrastructure nationally.