Creative industries financial Incentives

Financial Incentives & Support

Following campaigning by the creative industries, the UK has for several years provided a series of tax reliefs for the creative industries to support investment in these sectors. You can find headline statistics from these in the respective industry pages on this site, or download the full HMRC report. You can also read analysis of the impact of these reliefs up to 2018 here.

In 2018, the UK government and the CIC, in partnership with the Creative Industries Federation, agreed a three year sector deal to stimulate investment and innovation by creative organisations.

Following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the government which had previously launched general business support packages, also announced a specific recovery fund for the cultural and heritage industries.

Other targeted measures have included a Production Restart scheme to afford film productions protection from losses caused by COVID-related cancellations.

In February 2021, the government estimated that up to 20,000 jobs and 160 productions had benefited from this scheme since October 2020.

However, industries such as music and fashion have continued to call for specific policies to help them mitigate the damage to creative organisations from ongoing social distancing and shutdown measures connected to the pandemic, and to help businesses build back.