£1.5bn for cultural infrastructure announced by UK Government
The government has announced a £1.5 billion investment to stabilise and renew England’s cultural infrastructure. This article sets out what’s in the package, how the sector has responded, and why it matters for communities across the country.
We welcome the leadership shown by the UK Government and Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy MP, in recognising that museums, heritage sites, libraries and cultural venues are not optional extras, but essential civic infrastructure — central to pride in place, learning, participation and community life.
The new funding package has been widely supported across the cultural and heritage sector. National museum leaders, trade bodies, heritage organisations and unions have described it as a long-overdue vote of confidence, particularly in tackling critical maintenance backlogs and stabilising at-risk buildings.
What the £1.5bn will support
The £1.5bn package brings together several major capital programmes designed to stabilise and renew cultural and heritage infrastructure over the coming years. Taken together, this funding will support well over 1,000 cultural and heritage sites, protecting the physical foundations of cultural life in towns, cities and communities across England.
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What we know
£600m for national museums and DCMS-sponsored bodies, focused on addressing critical maintenance backlogs and strengthening the long-term resilience of buildings and collections.
£160m for local and regional museums, including civic museums. This includes capital funding to support urgent repairs and improvements, alongside a new Museum Transformation programme intended to support more sustainable operating models.
What we don’t yet know
Timelines, application routes and delivery partners for the Museum Transformation programme.
How funding will be phased over the five-year period.
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What we know
Funding to support around 300 capital projects in arts venues across the country.
Aimed at stabilising and renewing the physical infrastructure of theatres, arts centres and other cultural venues.
What we don’t yet know
Whether funding will be distributed through open application rounds, strategic allocations, or a mix of both.
Any regional targeting or minimum allocations.
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What we know
Funding for heritage buildings at risk, supporting urgent repair and conservation.
Investment in the Heritage Revival Fund, focused on community-led reuse of historic buildings.
Continued capital support for historic places of worship, replacing and extending existing arrangements.
What we don’t yet know
Precise breakdowns between heritage sub-programmes beyond headline figures.
Assessment criteria and support for community-led projects.
Delivery bodies and application timelines.
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What we know
Capital funding to improve library buildings and facilities, including upgrades to make spaces more modern, accessible and fit for community use.
What we don’t yet know
How funding will be allocated across local authorities.
The balance between building fabric, digital infrastructure and accessibility improvements.
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What we know
A capital uplift for ACE National Portfolio Organisations, alongside a wider increase in regular investment.
Intended to support the resilience and sustainability of funded organisations’ estates and infrastructure.
What we don’t yet know
How capital funding will be distributed within the National Portfolio.
How this uplift will align with ACE’s wider investment strategy and funding cycles.
£1.5bn Breakdown
From investment to delivery
This investment creates a powerful opportunity to strengthen delivery across the cultural system. With significant capital now flowing through arm’s-length bodies and delivery partners, there is new capacity to support organisations at scale and to address long-standing unmet need across the country.
Handled well, this funding can be distributed with pace and purpose - providing stability for organisations that have been seeking investment for years and creating headroom to refocus on people, programmes and audiences. It also opens space for more collaborative, place-based approaches to decision-making, particularly as strategic authorities and sub-regional partnerships continue to emerge.
This moment should also catalyse wider investment. Alongside substantial public funding - including major commitments through UKRI and the Arts and Humanities Research Council - there is a clear invitation for private investors, philanthropists and the creative industries to step forward. Cultural and heritage infrastructure underpins innovation, skills pipelines and local economies; public leadership at this scale creates the conditions for sustained private investment to follow.
Capital matters — but people make culture work
This package prioritises capital investment and repair. After years of underinvestment, much of the cultural estate has become fragile to the point of dysfunction. Leaking roofs, inaccessible buildings and mounting maintenance backlogs are systemic problems that undermine participation, education, wellbeing and economic value.
Many cultural organisations operate from ageing or historic buildings that are costly to maintain and difficult to adapt. These pressures absorb limited resources, restrict accessibility, weaken environmental performance and divert attention from audiences and programmes - despite the sector’s strong commitment to sustainability. The £1.5 billion commitment therefore acts as a stabilising intervention: securing the physical foundations of cultural activity, supporting jobs and skills, and creating the conditions for organisations to move from crisis management to longer-term planning.
That stability enables investment in people and programmes. By reducing emergency repairs and unsustainable running costs, capital investment frees organisations to rebuild workforces, reconnect with audiences and reopen buildings safely. As open, public-facing civic spaces, cultural venues function as part of the commons - places where people can engage with the arts, meet fellow citizens, exchange ideas, access information and services, and spend time in shared, welcoming environments. Capital investment that keeps buildings safe, accessible and fit for purpose underpins this wider civic role.
A wider reset for the ecosystem
This investment represents a broader reset across the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.
Culture Commons’ research across all four UK nations consistently shows that cultural investment delivers the greatest public value when it strengthens whole local ecosystems - institutions, workforce, partnerships and participation - rather than isolated assets. After years of erosion, this funding creates the conditions to stabilise those systems and restore confidence across the sector.
Arts venues, heritage sites, libraries and cultural organisations act as anchors within those systems. This investment allows those anchors to be stabilised and wider cultural ecosystems to function with greater confidence.
From evidence to investment
For Culture Commons, this announcement underlines how sustained, evidence-led engagement can shape the national policy conversation and translate into meaningful public investment.
Working with the English Civic Museums Network, we supported civic museums across England to consolidate frontline experience into a clear, policy-ready evidence base. The resulting review set out the public value civic museums deliver, the scale of risk created by long-term underinvestment, and a framework for aligning with national missions and policy objectives.
By reframing civic museums as essential infrastructure - underpinning education, wellbeing, skills, tourism and place identity - the review helped move the debate beyond short-term funding pressures to questions of long-term sustainability. The inclusion of ring-fenced funding for local and regional museums within this £1.5bn package reflects that argument landing, and demonstrates how collective, well-evidenced advocacy can unlock investment at scale.
The case for devolution
How this funding is delivered matters as much as the scale of the investment itself. This announcement creates a platform for the next phase of reform: how cultural investment is designed, targeted and delivered at local and sub-regional level.
Future rounds of investment could build on this moment by drawing on ideas coming through our large scale research and policy work focussed on ‘cultural devolution’ by:
Devolving funding and accountability to mayoral combined authorities and sub-regional partnerships, using Cultural Ecosystem Plans to manage multi-year cultural investment and align funding with wider place-based priorities such as regeneration, skills and growth.
Embedding shared decision-making through Culture Forums, bringing together public bodies, cultural organisations, workforce and freelance representatives, private sector partners and community voices to set priorities, advise on investment and ensure local accountability.
This is not about reducing national ambition or standards. It is about improving delivery, targeting investment more effectively, and securing long-term value for money by matching national funding with local insight, accountability and civic purpose - and by leaning into the wider devolution settlement now taking shape across England.
Turning momentum into lasting change
Last year, we argued that cultural renewal under the new UK Government had yet to begin in earnest. This announcement marks a clear shift - a moment when renewal moves from aspiration to action.
The opportunity now is to ensure this investment does more than repair the physical legacy of underinvestment. Used well, it can restore confidence across the sector, rebuild capacity and capability, and give organisations the stability they need to plan, collaborate and serve their communities over the long term. It could also pave the way for a more devolved, place-based cultural settlement, rooted in local priorities and shared civic purpose.
Culture Commons will continue to work with government, cultural networks, mayors, local authorities and communities to help turn this moment into the next phase of delivery.
If you’d like to discuss how this major investment or cultural devolution might work for you or your organisation, we’d be delighted to help: contact@culturecommons.uk
