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An Update on Scottish Government funding support for Visitor Attractions

Added: 06 Jan 2022

As part of her statement in parliament on 5^th January, the First Minister announced that a further £55m will be allocated to businesses being impacted by the pandemic, including an extra £3m to tourism businesses. This follows on from Ms Sturgeon’s statement on 29 December of additional support for businesses, where she committed an extra £107 million targeted funding which included:

• £32m for hospitality and leisure businesses
• £27m for culture
• £10m for hospitality affected by table service
• £17m for events

ASVA has been in dialogue with the Scottish Government about these funding steams to establish exactly where visitor attractions fit in with this additional funding. Whilst we cannot share any details as yet, we are reassured that the Scottish Government has recognised that visitor attractions have been impacted and support is going to be made available for our sector through various funding streams.

Dialogue continues and we hope to be in a position to provide more information in the upcoming days. What we can say is that it is highly likely that attractions will not be able to benefit from accessing multiple funds at the same time. The advice we have been given thus far is that, whilst multiple funding streams are being made available, businesses will only be able to apply for one fund, i.e. if an attraction applies for support through the Events Fund, it will not be able to apply for any of the other funds. Therefore attractions that could be eligible for multiple funds would be advised to wait until details of the various funding streams are published before applying.

Whist we await more information, we would in the meantime reassure our members that we continue to highlight to the Scottish Government the extent of the financial pressures that many attractions are currently experiencing and the considerable need for funding support for businesses within our sector.

For more information about the targeted funding announced by the First Minister on 29^th December, please click here.