Select committee: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee

Recommendation 2

Ninth Report - Major cultural and sporting events Published 16 Mar 2022 Paragraph 18 Addressed to Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The lack of guaranteed funding for UK City of Culture hosts creates unnecessary uncertainty and risks undermining other fundraising efforts. The Government should guarantee successful hosts of UK City of Culture an appropriate amount of national funding from the outset, rather than require the host to wait for a decision, to enable organisers to focus their efforts on securing other sources of funding.

From: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Ninth Report - Major cultural and sporting events (HC 259), paragraph 18, 16 March 2022

Government response

The government responded to the whole report on 24 June 2022 (deadline 16 June 2022).

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The government welcomes the Committee's report and shares its view on the value of major events, but disagrees with its assessment of UNBOXED and of legacy work, and gives a mixed response on strategy, funding and legislation.

  • On a strategy for major events, its "current assessment" is that publishing one "is not an immediate priority". It is establishing a cross-Government Events Team and refreshing the Gold Framework for Major Sporting Events, "for publication later this year".
  • On football governance, it will legislate to establish the independent regulator "when parliamentary time allows", with a White Paper "for publication in the summer". It says the legislation "cannot be rushed".
  • It "disagrees with the Committee's assessment" of UNBOXED, and on legacy and evaluation it agrees they are critical but disagrees that this is "not currently a priority".
  • On the listed events regime, it has "no current plans to undertake a full review of the list", but "will therefore undertake a review" of whether its scope should extend to digital rights.

Read the government's response ↗ Report an error