Railways and related organisations share in £8m grants

FIFTY-THREE RAILWAYS/ ORGANISATIONS have shared £8.2m in grants from the Culture Recovery Fund. The second round of funding saw 2,700 organisations in the culture and heritage sector receive £400m in grants and loans to help the reopen and recover after coronavirus. This brings the Government’s total investment so far, across grants, capital and repayable finance, to more than £1.2 billion across more than 5,000 individual cultural, heritage and arts organisations and sites. The fund was heavily oversubscribed, which means not every organisation that applied received what it had applied for.

The first round of grants and repayable finance, totalling more than £800m, was allocated in 2021 to ensure the immediate survival of 3,800 cultural organisations and heritage sites across the country. In 2020, a total of 39 railways and organisations received £2.6m from the Heritage Emergency Fund to enable them to reopen in COVID-safe mode, or to complete outstanding projects.

This second tranche of funding builds on the lifeline grants already awarded to support museums, theatres, performance venues, historic sites and cinemas as they reopen to audiences and visitors throughout the spring and summer. The funding is largely to enable attractions to re-open in a COVID-safe manner.