BEIS and DCMS survey on rising costs

Following the recent announcement of support for energy bills for businesses and charities, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) together with the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is seeking to collate individual organisation-level information to help the government further understand the impact of rising energy bills and each sector’s case for energy costs support beyond April 2023.

The BEIS survey is now live and has an EXTENDED closing date – 23.55hrs on Sunday 30th October 2022.

• Arts Council guidance on the survey is here https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/energy-bill-relief-scheme-review-sector-survey. For those who prefer to go directly the link to complete the questionnaire is at: https://beis.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cTob3uhBoMiwgOW
• To complete this survey, you will need data on energy consumption and costs to hand, as well as more general financial information about your income and expenditure.
• DCMS also advise to ensure that responses are collated by BEIS under the correct sector, museums and galleries use the descriptor Museums activities in question 1.3.
• In addition, the SIC code to be used by museums is 91020, Museums activities. Heritage organisations may wish to use 9103 Operation of historical sites and buildings and similar visitor attractions
• There are several opportunities in the survey for free text answers, for example about your activities that cannot be stopped, the impact of reduced services on society, and what factors BEIS should take into account when deciding which sectors are vulnerable. In answering these questions you may wish to consider: your role caring for cultural and heritage assets, such as preserving collections and maintaining historic buildings, and the fixed costs of this work including where environmental controls are necessary to ensure objects are safe and buildings do not degrade; protecting existing public investment, for example through regular public funding or the Cultural Recovery Fund; your socioeconomic impact, for example through community programmes, supporting local history and heritage, drawing in residents and visitors to your local area, and ability to provide a safe civic space for vulnerable individuals.

Lisa Ollerhead, Director of AIM, said

“This survey follows on from the feedback provided to government and other sector stakeholders by AIM via its recent survey. We appreciate the considerable support we had with that and do be assured that we shared your feedback, in detail, in our ongoing advocacy work on the challenges of rising costs.

Sector bodies are also working together to provide separately commissioned information to DCMS for BEIS to help identify museums and heritage as a vulnerable sector.

We know that these surveys take up your time and energy in a very busy period, but BEIS will be making crucial decisions about support for vulnerable sectors based on this information so it is important that as many museums and heritage organisations complete, with as much detail as possible, and we hope many of our members will be able to take part.”

Complete the questionnaire at https://beis.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cTob3uhBoMiwgOW