Senedd Cymru | Welsh Parliament
Y Pwyllgor Cyllid | Finance Committee
Cyllideb Ddrafft Llywodraeth Cymru 2026-27 | Welsh Government Draft Budget 2026-27
Ymateb gan Music Venue Trust | Evidence from Music Venue Trust
(We would be grateful if you could keep your answer to around 500 words).
The main impact for grassroots music venues (GMVs) has been the cut in business rate relief from 75% to 40% that was implemented in April 2024.
This rise continues to pose a significant threat to GMVs. Cutting business rates relief is having a direct impact on the number of events that are staged in Wales, reducing supply, cutting economic activity, and negatively impacting jobs, especially in the ‘gig economy’.
The gross profit from the entire sector in Wales in 2024 was £137,000. The fall in rates relief creates a new additional cost of £127,000. Meanwhile, the 44 GMVs in Wales contributed over £28.5 million to the economy. This single measure on business rates is putting the sector, as an entire network, into additional financial difficulty. It places the long-term resilience of Welsh GMVs at a severe and direct competitive disadvantage when compared to their cultural counterparts in England that will continue to be entitled to rate relief, resulting in a very significant national disparity between costs associated with touring.
37 GMVs in Wales (77%) are subject to the increase in costs, allowing for all models of rate relief.
The demand for rate payment increases falls disproportionately on venues already identified by MVT as those most at risk of closure due to their legal infrastructure, location and business model.
The value of the increase by venue is such that it will present an immediate threat of closure to 16 venues - 33.3% of all the venues in Wales.
If these 16 venues close, the direct cost to the rates budget would be £153,679. Only 12 of these venues would need to close before the total raised from the predicted increase delivered by this budget measure (£127,000) would be eliminated by business closures.
Furthermore, even if venues do not close, this cut in rate relief is removing their ability to be financially sustainable, and to invest in new music and community engagement.
588 jobs, £8 million of economic activity, 3500 events and 30,000 performance opportunities for musicians are at direct risk from this measure. The closure of a single venue represents a huge loss to the local community, to the music sector, and to the future of Welsh talent. The closure of 16 would be a catastrophe to the Welsh grassroots music scene. Welsh GMVs deserve to be operating within a level playing field as their cultural counterparts in England.
More broadly, we feel that much of the funding supposedly aimed at GMVs has not just been cut, but is usually not appropriately aimed at GMVs, despite the purported aims of the specific funding streams. Through this, funding is actually being cut, because GMVs are not receiving it, while the sector, MSs and wider stakeholders are consistently being told there is funding available.
For example, the Music Revenue Fund from Creative Wales had the key criteria that it is to support the release of new music, which means that venues can only be tangentially involved in the event that an artist decides to apply, as part of releasing new music, to play at their venue. It is, therefore, not supporting grassroots music venues in the way we hoped, and we would ask that the criteria are urgently reviewed and opened up to include grassroots music venues.
We appreciate that live music venues are one of Creative Wales's priorities, however, we do not believe this fund fits with those aims given that grassroots music venues - the research and development department of the grassroots live sector - can only be tangentially involved, if at all. We are currently not aware of any other plans in the year ahead to support grassroots music venues so would be pleased to hear about this as soon as possible.
(We would be grateful if you could keep your answer to around 500 words).
The cut in business rate relief from 40% to 75% will cause irreversible damage and, given the lack of wider funding for grassroots music venues (GMVs), will only add to the crisis already happening in Welsh grassroots music. This means that many of the member venues we work with in Wales do not feel at all financially prepared for the 2026-27 financial year.
The draft Budget notes that Welsh business “will pay less than expected on business rates in 2025-26 with a 1% cap instead of 1.7%. Retail, leisure and hospitality businesses get 40% off, up to £110,000 per business.”
For GMVs, however, this single measure of leaving rate relief at 40% is putting the sector, as an entire network, into significant financial difficulty. It places the long-term resilience of Welsh GMVs at a severe and direct competitive disadvantage when compared to their cultural counterparts in England that will continue to be entitled to rate relief, resulting in a very significant national disparity between costs associated with touring. The value of the increase by venue is such that it will present an immediate threat of closure to 16 venues - 33.3% of all the venues in Wales.
It’s not just that venues will close.
588 jobs, £8 million of economic activity, 3500 events and 30,000 performance opportunities for musicians are at direct risk from this measure. There are specialist skills - including sound, lighting, operations, promoting, artist management - that will either be directly lost in Wales as a result of venues closing, or they will simply move their work elsewhere in the UK, leaving Wales at a direct disadvantage.
The closure of a single venue represents a huge loss to the local community, to the music sector, and to the future of Welsh talent. The closure of 16 would be a catastrophe to the Welsh grassroots music scene. Welsh GMVs deserve to be operating within a level playing field as their cultural counterparts in England.
In 2024, Music Venue Trust saw a 20% rise in venues asking for help from our Emergency Response Service due to financial difficulties. 4 of 48 venues closed altogether.
These GMVs do not have the additional financial cushion to come through this cut in business rate relief. Despite the public demand for grassroots live music, with 23 million audience visits to a gig last year, the average profit margin for a GMV is 0.48%.
GMVs are uniquely placed to provide long term and sustainable cultural delivery to a wide variety of areas from sprawling cities to rural communities, and their position at the heart of the music ecosystem allows investment to reach beyond the funded organisations. Their places as cultural regional hubs support a wide region beyond their doors and develop skills often not catered to in traditional educational environments.
Many venues provide additional activities and benefits for their local communities. These include apprenticeships, jobs for local young people, children’s classes and concerts, fairs, festivals, comedy, and day activities. Local communities will lose a whole host of cultural and community activity if venues are to close as as a result of cut funding and higher business rates.
We would also note the impact on tourism from venues closing; an average tour in 2004 would have included 22 dates. In 2024, this is now 12. Worse, those 22 dates might have taken place in 28 different locations across the country that were regularly accessing exciting new and original live music. In 2024, just 12 cities were regular hosts to such shows. The grassroots sector in Wales invests over £14.9 million annually purely into the development of new British talent, supporting both frontline performing artists and production and technical/logistics crew.
If fewer bands are touring in Wales, this has both a detrimental effect on the Welsh economy, and on the opportunity for people to see live music and culture in their local communities, especially more rural ones.
(We would be grateful if you could keep your answer to around 500 words).
We have focussed this answer on the needs of people living in urban, post-industrial, and rural communities accessing culture and community activities. This is to ensure that arts and culture are opened up to as broad and as keen an audience as we know it deserves, and that audiences are provided with all the support they require to ensure accessibility.
The Budget draft notes that the public transport sector “needs to be able to support people across Wales and help tackle climate change,” and it also promises to put “more funding into bus networks and improving railway lines.”
A lot of grassroots music venues, however, are in areas that continue to be poorly supported by dwindling and insufficient public transport infrastructure, including rural towns, as well as larger cities with inadequate interconnecting services. Audiences are limited to attending grassroots music and cultural events in close proximity to them, and as such broader audiences are being hindered from attending venues that they otherwise would be active supporters of.
Anecdotally, some GMVs in Swansea have reported an increase in customers later on in the evenings because of new later weeknight trains between Cardiff and Swansea. This service does not, however, extend to weekend nights when a lot of gigs happen, or extend to other parts of Wales that could also benefit. Currently, the latest train links running East leave Swansea at 22:37 on a Saturday evening. The hard decision then lies on an attendee at one of these venues to either drive or leave early and miss the closing hour of an event. The former obviously does not lend itself well to climate change, while the latter means we are reducing accessibility to cultural events. Either way, attendees are being considerably further out of pocket than if they were to have the ability to rely on public transport.
A survey of GMVs across Wales found that 94.1% of grassroots venues reported that their audience couldn’t access public transport after their actual licensed hours on weekends or weekdays, indicating that they were restricted in their practical opening hours compared to their licences. 64.7% of venues described current available public transport provision as poor or very poor for the venues’ needs, and 82.4% felt that the local businesses and cultural activities were rarely or never considered when public transport times and routes were being planned.
As noted above, many venues provide additional activities and benefits for their local communities. These include apprenticeships, jobs for local young people, children’s classes and concerts, fairs, festivals, comedy, and day activities. It is vital that people from all areas of Wales are able to use safe, reliable, and cost-effective public transport to access these kinds of services and activities.
Buses in particular are crucial for rural areas, under-served urban areas, and as a cost-effective way for most people to travel, including young people. Learning to drive and the cost of owning a car, is often prohibitively expensive for young people. If there are no, or too few, safe late night bus services, however, young people are prevented from accessing culture and arts in their communities, such as that provided by grassroots music venues. These venues provide a safe space for young people to socialise, develop performing arts skills, grow their confidence, and even identify a possible career. For older people, attending a cultural event or activity can also improve their health and mental wellbeing, and cheap bus travel is the most environmentally-friendly way to achieve this.
588 jobs, £8 million of economic activity, 3500 events and 30,000 performance opportunities for musicians are supported by Welsh grassroots music venues. There are specialist skills that will either be directly lost in Wales as a result of venues closing, or they will simply move their work elsewhere, leaving Wales at a direct disadvantage.
(We would be grateful if you could keep your answer to around 500 words).
We don’t believe business support policies can have been effective with the cut in business rate relief. Venues are being forced to cut other costs and in some cases, consider closing altogether. Programming of new and original music is the most obvious casualty of a lack of funding; this high risk activity of investing in new artists without the prospect of financial return has simply had to be cut from the budget. The result is that venues impacted most significantly by the cuts to rate relief have altered their programming to present reliable income streams at lower risk and with lower costs. In the grassroots music venue sector, this results in lower investment in artists, cuts to tech, services and supporting roles, and a focus shift from cultural activity to commercially viable events.
Ancillary services, such as community events, support for local charities, opportunities for rehearsal and recording time, have also been cut to manage the financial demands of the national government.
(We would be grateful if you could keep your answer to around 500 words).
We would again urge the Welsh Government to consider investing considerable resources in improved bus and train services, particularly in rural areas. Too often, people wanting to access cultural and community events - such as live music, or additional cultural activities hosted by grassroots music - are expected to attend these by private transportation due to a lack of alternatives. We believe this is both bad for the economy, and bad for the environment.
The Welsh Government’s own report, ‘Developing an Action Plan for the Visitor Economy’ (2020), also highlighted the need for greater investment in public facilities, transport links and accessibility, and environmental maintenance. This included light rail systems, alongside the more traditional infrastructure issues such as improvements to rail and rolling stock.
When asked what changes to public transport infrastructure would make the biggest difference, respondents suggested: Improved public transport to and within rural areas; More regular public transport across Wales; and Greater promotion of transport options.
Almost half of respondents suggested that the quality and accessibility of public transport needed to be improved, whilst a broadly similar group suggested that investment was needed in the road network. Many respondents to the questions interpreted it as travelling to and across Wales, suggesting that respondents perceived travelling within Wales to be just as important as travelling to the country.
We believe that resources should be put aside to improve transport links, with a special view towards safe late-night travel, to ensure that adequate support is put in place to allow GMVs and cultural venues of all sizes to thrive and flourish.
Welsh Government clearly has overarching responsibility for tourism policy in Wales, as well as a strategic oversight of cohesive economic, cultural and infrastructure policy around such offers, and their Welcome To Wales: Priorities for the Visitor Economy 2020-25 strategy actively set out a vision for tourism in Wales, building upon key sub-strategies including investment in infrastructure and the improvement of access to Wales for visitors. Any impact in these areas is hampered by a lack of support, engagement and investment by the Welsh Government in regional transportation infrastructure.
Reliable late night travel links between key destinations is vital to a thriving cultural landscape, and to ensure that art and culture remains, firmly, for all.
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The Committee would like to focus on a number of other specific areas in the scrutiny of the Budget. Do you have any specific comments on any of the areas identified below?
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One of the Well-being Goals in the Future Generations Act is “A Wales of vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language”. Given the financial challenges facing GMVs across Wales, we cannot see how this goal is being achieved. The Welsh Ministers are noted in the Act guidance as having the same “well-being duty as other specified public bodies” so we believe there is an opportunity here for Ministers to better understand and tackle the challenges facing GMVs, especially on business rates and the long-term reform of such taxes. There is also an opportunity for public bodies, such as Councils, to better recognise the opportunity to protect and promote GMVs when things like planning decisions come in, or when a GMV publicises that they are under threat of closure either due to noise complaints or new developments, or due to other circumstances such as rent increases. The Council has an opportunity, and an obligation, to ensure that Wales has a vibrant culture, and therefore could take better steps to protect such GMVs from closure which puts Welsh culture at risk. This also aligns with the Act’s guidance that suggests, “Taking a place-based or community-based approach to the well-being goals can help understand where the opportunities are and where well-being objectives or actions focus on a particular community.”
The goals further state that Wales should have a society “that encourages people to participate in the arts, and sports and recreation”. We believe GMVs are doing their part to encourage this, through employment and the provision of culture and entertainment. They are not, however, adequately supported in Welsh Government policy and reaching the goal is therefore being obstructed. We believe we have shown the Welsh Government through numerous letters the opportunity they have to maximise their contribution to this goal and the changes they can make to make a better contribution.