Museum sector bodies make joint submission to Autumn Budget consultation 13 Sep 2024

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NMDC together with Art Fund, AIM, ECMN and the MA have made a joint submission to HM Treasury’s call for policy suggestions for the 2024 Autumn Budget.

The submission outlines how museums can help deliver all five of the Government’s Missions:

1. Kickstart economic growth: Museums make a major contribution to national and regional tourism, as well as generating jobs, supporting local supply chains, and playing a key role in regeneration and revitalising high streets. Their collections are a vital resource for research and innovation and museums are an essential part of the UK’s international soft power.

2. Make Britain a clean energy superpower: Museums are uniquely positioned to educate and inspire the public about the climate crisis and the action needed to tackle it. They can also be exemplars of environmentally sustainable estate management, and are using their collections and expertise to drive global policy and research on fighting the climate crisis.

3. Take back our streets: Museums play a vital role in fostering understanding and bringing people together. They help build and support communities by celebrating a shared history and identity, encouraging civic engagement and pride in place. After the recent riots they can provide a safe and trusted space where communities can convene to heal and rebuild.

4. Break down barriers to opportunity: Museums are an integral part of the UK’s educational infrastructure, supporting subjects right across the curriculum as well as lifelong learning and skills development. They provide a wealth of opportunities for volunteers, support disadvantaged groups in their communities, and offer free and low cost opportunities to everyone for inspiration, learning and fun.

5. Build an NHS fit for the future: Museums make a key contribution to individual and community health and well-being and to tackling loneliness, delivering programmes in their local communities to improve health issues from dementia to depression. They play a role in prevention, treatment and rehabilitation and are increasingly involved in schemes that support the NHS such as social prescribing.

The joint submission also highlights the current challenges for UK museums. After over a decade of austerity and with the cost of living crisis and legacy of the pandemic continuing to bite, museum budgets at both national and regional levels are stretched to breaking point, with many Local Authority-reliant museums now in a perilous financial position.

Sector bodies therefore make a number of proposals for how Government can support UK museums in the Autumn Budget. These include:

Emergency funding for civic museums: An injection of immediate funds would help rectify some of the damage inflicted by austerity and bring the most at-risk civic museums back to a more stable position until more sustainable long-term solutions can be found.
Fair, long-term funding settlements for Local Authorities: A fairer funding settlement is urgently needed so Local Authorities can support and invest in their museums – without this the future for civic museums across the country will continue to look bleak.
Maintaining funding for Arts Council England: Funding for ACE needs to enable, at minimum, fulfilment of existing commitments for National Portfolio funding, as well as project grant funding so that core museum work such as collections care continues to be supported in the wider sector.
Capital investment for all UK museums: Investment is needed across the whole museum sector for maintenance backlogs and repairs to historic buildings, to ensure the long-term safety of collections and public access to them.
In particular the response calls for the continuation and expansion of the Museums Estates and Development Fund (MEND) fund. The huge over-subscription for the first two rounds demonstrates the urgent need across the sector for further funding to extend the scheme.
It also calls for green investment to support the decarbonisation of the sector and make museum buildings resilient to pressures from the changing climate, and funding for digital infrastructure and cyber security to ensure collections remain safe, secure and accessible.
Devolved museum funding: National and regional museums across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales face the same challenges as their counterparts in England – a fair funding settlement is essential to ensure devolved governments can support and invest in their museums.
Cultural and creative education: Museum bodies urge Government to restore the place of creative subjects on the school curriculum, and to invest in museums as a vital part of the UK’s cultural education infrastructure.
Retaining free admission to UK national museums: Free entry has been a major Labour policy success which increases visitor numbers, as well as delivering a huge range of cultural, learning and economic benefits.
Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief (MGETR): The response stresses the importance of MGETR and proposes changes that would increase its impact and benefits – including maintaining higher rates of relief, adapting the scheme so that Local Authority museums can access it, revisiting thresholds and limits of the relief and expansion to include wider forms of museum activity.

Museum sector bodies will continue working in partnership to make the case to Government for adequate, long-term and sustainable investment in all UK museums, including in preparation for the upcoming Spending Review in Spring 2025.