The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is reporting that its grant funding to cultural organisations has fallen by 30% over the last year.

During 2022/23 charities in the sector received a total of £1.3bn in grant-in-aid funding. Adjusted for inflation this was 30% down on the previous year.

The proportion of grants to total income ranged markedly from 0.1% to 107.8% during 2022/23.

Cultural charities are now less reliant on grant funding, the figures suggest compared to the previous year.

The average proportion of DCMS grant funding to total charity income in 2022/23 was 30.2%, down from 42% in 2021/22.

The latest figures also show that cultural organisations fundraising income is up. In 2022/23 the fundraising total was £492m, an 11.8% increase when inflation is taken into account on the previous year.

The proportion of fundraising income to total income is up from 10.2% in 2021/22 to 11.7% in 2022/23, the DCMS figures reveal.

The department directly funds 19 cultural organisations via grant-in-aid. These include Arts Council England and their National Portfolio Organisations, the British Film Institute, British Library, Historic England and the 15 DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries.

The total income of DCMS funding cultural organisations was £4.2bn in 2022/23, a 2.7% fall on the previous year’s figures but an increase of 3.2% compared to 2018/19, the last year that was unaffected by Covid.

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