Recommendation 4

The Department lacks a comprehensive understanding of the coverage and impact of its funding on parts of the sector which found themselves without funds. The Department and its arm’s-length bodies have distributed around £1.2 billion to 5,000 organisations and the Department is confident that all applicants that met criteria for cultural significance and sound finances received funding. But the Department’s analysis of how the funding has been distributed is incomplete. For example, the Department has only partial knowledge about the fund’s impact on freelancers, commercial organisations, supply-chain businesses and festivals. Festivals are making difficult decisions about whether to risk their survival by going ahead this summer, but the Department has not modelled the cost of underwriting festival indemnity insurance. Recommendation: The Department should write to us within three months setting out what it intends to do to support those that were under-represented in terms of the funding they received from the Culture Recovery Fund such as freelancers and festivals.