Government accused of failure to fund museum repairs, 'endangering visitors'

A new report has revealed that the government’s failure to spend enough on repairs to the nation’s leading museums is putting priceless art and the safety of staff and visitors at risk in the face of 95 separate risks identified at iconic buildings.

According to the spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has been told by museums that the backlog of repairs has been “getting worse.”

The department sponsors 15 iconic museums and galleries in England, and says it is “concerned about the condition of the museum estate,” but its grant in-aid funding "has not been enough to cover the amounts the museums have requested for repairs to the estate", the report said.”

The investigation found that DCMS was failing to collect enough information about the funding the museums required, and therefore did not know how much money was needed to address a worrying maintenance backlog.

In 2017, the department found that "the lack of sufficient maintenance" was "creating significant risks" and noted that concerns over the museums' maintenance backlogs "endanger collections and potentially staff and visitors.”

The institutions covered by the report include Royal Museums Greenwich, as well as the British Museum, National Gallery, National History Museum, Imperial War Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Science Museum Group, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery.

Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: "Failure to spend enough on repairs to the nation's leading museums has put priceless art and the safety of staff and visitors at risk.

"The museums are telling DCMS that the backlog is getting worse. But the department does not yet know the full extent of the problem.

"The Government has only offered sticking-plasters - small amounts of money, too late in the day to do anything more than a short-term fix."

A warning of the problems facing museums and their buildings include the Wallace Collection, where a piece of masonry fell from the portico in 2018 due to deterioration of the supporting beams.

As of July 2019, the DCMS had identified 95 risks for the museums, 18 of which related directly to the need for repairs to the estate or the funding of this work.

At least one such risk was recorded for 10 of the 15 museums, the NAO report said.

Although some of the museums received donations and sponsorship, these funds often had conditions attached that only allow spending on public-facing elements of buildings, so institutions rely on the grant-in-aid funding from the Government to cover maintenance.

In 2015, the sponsored museums projected that grant in-aid would meet 90% of spending on essential maintenance, but that funding has fallen by 20% in real terms.

A DCMS spokesman said: "We are committed to protecting and preserving the extraordinary buildings that hold the UK's national collection.

"Estates management has been, and will remain, our priority and we are working closely with our sponsored museums to understand their unique maintenance needs."