Question reference: S6W-05928
- Asked by: Paul Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 27 January 2022
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Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 4 February 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how venues impacted by the temporary Omicron restrictions can access the targeted funds allocated for culture and events, and what steps it can take to ensure that such venues in receipt of funding will fairly compensate employees with full back-dated pay for the wages lost while their workplace was closed.
Answer
The Scottish Government has announced £65 million of additional funding support for the culture and events sectors that were impacted by the additional Covid-19 restrictions introduced in December 2021. This is in addition to the £175m of emergency funding provided to the culture, heritage and events since the start of the pandemic.
Eligible events which have previously received support through the Event Industry Support Funds or the Pivotal Event Businesses Fund will receive top-up payments from this funding. Payments have begun to be made and EventScotland is seeking to make these as swiftly as possible.
Creative Scotland’s Freelancers Cancellation Fund closed for applications on 24 January, and the Cancellation fund for Cultural Organisations closed on 2 February. Assessments are ongoing and award payments are already being made. We encourage any organisation that applies to the Creative Scotland Cultural Organisations cancellation fund to use any funding they receive to pay all staff that they employ.
Work is continuing at pace to determine the best way of distributing the remaining funding to support to those event and cultural businesses continuing to experience cancellation or postponements in February and March, or who may have previously not had access to COVID-19 funding support.