Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
7th Report - Financial resilience of government-sponsored museums and galleries
Public Accounts Committee
HC 96
Published 24 June 2026
Recommendations
3
The Department is not doing enough to ensure museums and galleries apply learning from recent...
Recommendation
The Department is not doing enough to ensure museums and galleries apply learning from recent threats to the physical security of their collections and their cyber security. Museums and galleries face significant challenges on cyber-security and the physical security of …
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5
The Department’s current funding regime risks not providing museums and galleries with sufficient incentives to...
Recommendation
The Department’s current funding regime risks not providing museums and galleries with sufficient incentives to support themselves financially. The Department recognises the importance of providing museums and galleries with incentives to maximise opportunities for raising their own income, while also …
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Conclusions (25)
2
Conclusion
The Department is missing opportunities to help museums and galleries address some of the common challenges to their resilience. The Department aims to have sufficient oversight of museums and galleries while at the same time allowing them to use the freedoms they have to operate at arm’s length. For example, …
4
Conclusion
The Department relies heavily on museums and galleries and their boards to ensure their own financial resilience, but their boards are not consistently well-equipped to do this effectively. As arms-length bodies, museums and galleries have primary responsibility for their ongoing financial resilience, with their boards playing an important role in …
6
Conclusion
The Department does not have the necessary insights into museums and galleries to give it sufficient early warning of their potential financial failure. The Department’s line of sight of museums’ and galleries’ finances and financial management capabilities is via quarterly partnership meetings and its receipt of copies of museums’ and …
1
Conclusion
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Department for Culture Media & Sport (the Department) on the financial resilience of government-sponsored museums and galleries.1
7
Conclusion
Grant-in-aid from the Department forms a significant proportion of the total income of the sponsored museums and galleries. It was, for example, an average of 46% of total income in 2024–25.13 We therefore asked whether the provision of grant-in-aid meant there was any incentive for the museums and galleries to …
8
Conclusion
In most years, when calculating the grant-in-aid for the museums and galleries for the coming year, the Department applied an equal percentage uplift to their existing baseline allocations to allow for inflation, and subsequently used year-end top-ups to help those it discovered to be in financial trouble. It took a …
9
Conclusion
We asked the Department whether its usual approach of flat rate annual increases in museums’ and galleries’ funding at the start of the year, with additional top-ups later for those in financial trouble, provided the museums and galleries with insufficient incentive to maximise self-generated income or operate efficiently.21 The Department …
10
Conclusion
We are concerned that the top-ups in previous years show ultimately that the Department will not allow a museum or gallery to shut and will seek to do something to make sure the museum or gallery were a going concern, and that, as a result, the museums and galleries will …
11
Conclusion
With regard to sources of external income, we asked the Department if it had considered whether charging visitors would result in an overall increase in museums’ and galleries’ revenue. It replied that, since the conclusion of the National Audit Office report, Baroness Hodge in her independent review of Arts Council …
12
Conclusion
The Department is working to improve its oversight arrangements so that it has a clearer measure of the financial resilience of each museum or gallery.30 It told us that it considers that it has good insight into, and understanding of, what is going on with the museums and galleries through …
13
Conclusion
The Department currently has a set of long-standing key performance indicators in place to monitor the performance of the museums and galleries it sponsors. However, the indicators do not cover qualitative aspects of museums’ and galleries’ service delivery, such as opening times, gallery closures or condition of collections, which could …
14
Conclusion
We also asked the Department about the new Strategic Indicator Tool covering both financial and non-financial performance that it had been developing since early 2024 to help it determine its risk appetite for each of its arm’s-length bodies, including the museums and galleries.34 It told us that this was an …
15
Conclusion
There are indications that some museums and galleries may not have the financial management capability to manage future risks. For example, many have experienced significant churn in their senior financial leadership in recent years, while some have struggled to produce their annual accounts for audit on a timely basis. Weaknesses …
16
Conclusion
Museums and galleries face a number of common resilience challenges and opportunities, such as the costs of storing increasing collections, the challenge of digitally archiving collections, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the scope for the introduction of further shared services. Although the majority of museums and galleries agreed …
17
Conclusion
We therefore asked the Department how it was going to support the museums and galleries to collaborate and address these challenges and opportunities. In response, it pointed out that the 15 museums and galleries were ‘freedom bodies’, which means they have their own accounting officers, independent trustees and governance, and …
18
Conclusion
The Department told us that it provided support by developing a community of arm’s-length bodies, including museums and galleries, so that it can work on the common issues faced by museums and galleries together. It had already established a number of different forums at which these 38 C&AG’s report, paras …
19
Conclusion
However, the Department agreed that it could do more and play a stronger convening role.44 For example, it was establishing a digital data and technology forum for museums’ and galleries’ digital information officers to address common technical challenges and share good practice around the use of AI and the digitisation …
20
Conclusion
The Department also told us that, after talking to its museums and galleries, helping them make best of their collective storage space was one of the areas it wanted to look into further. The Department highlighted the example of the National Portrait Gallery leasing space from Tate as good practice …
21
Conclusion
Common resilience issues faced by the museums and galleries include the increasing threats they face of cyberattacks and of thefts of items from their collections, as evidenced by the October 2023 cyber-attack at the British Library and the thefts reported in 2023 at the British Museum.47 We therefore asked the …
22
Conclusion
The Department assured us that it was now working closely with the organisations on how it can provide central advice on improving cyber-resilience and minimising the threat and impact of cyber-attacks. It highlighted the Government’s cyber action plan, which the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology published earlier this year, …
23
Conclusion
We asked the Department what actions it was taking to support the museums and galleries to reduce the risk of thefts from their collections. The Department told us that it regularly discussed security matters at is meetings with the Chairs, CEOs, Finance Directors and the heads of Audit and Risk …
24
Conclusion
Museums’ and galleries’ boards play an important role in ensuring the financial resilience of the museums and galleries. As at 9 October 2025, there were 34 vacancies across the 15 museums’ and galleries’ boards, representing a total vacancy rate of 15%. The average length of time to make appointments in …
25
Conclusion
We therefore asked the Department why it was taking so long to get boards up to the level they should be. It assured us that the delays had not been due to a lack of resources within its own appointments team but had been caused, in part, by factors outside …
26
Conclusion
The Department reiterated that, despite the vacancies, all the museums’ and galleries’ boards had been quorate.60 However, it acknowledged that the appointments process had been too slow and that addressing the delays was on its agenda as it sought to address those factors that it could control.61 It had undertaken …
27
Conclusion
The Department told us that, as a result, the speed of board appointments had got slightly quicker. A number of the October 2025 vacancies had been filled, with vacancies across museums’ and galleries’ boards falling to 27, representing a total vacancy rate of 11%.64 The Department told us that it …