The UK government’s Film and TV Production Restart scheme boosted the UK economy by £2.3bn, according to a report commissioned by the British Film Institute (BFI) on behalf of the then-Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
The initiative to kickstart film and TV production across the country after the Covid-19 pandemic breakout supported 1,259 productions, totalling £3.06bn in expenditure, with 58% of productions based outside the capital, said UK accountants Saffery Champness and international consulting firm Nordicity.
Restart launched on October 16 2020, when productions were struggling to get Covid-related insurance cover from commercial insurers. Funding was available to all productions made by companies where at least half of the production budget is spent in the UK. Registration for the scheme closed on May 1 2022, and registered productions had until September 30 2022 to submit claims.
Living, Brian & Charles, Blue Jean and Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, as well as TV productions including Gentleman Jack, Peaky Blinders and His Dark Materials, were all supported by the scheme.
More than half of the production expenditure by recipients (£1.6bn) came from the high-end TV sector, with high-end TV spend accounting for 69% of the industry’s total in 2022, according to the BFI.
Almost half of productions (552) registered with the scheme were factual/documentaries.
Restart accounted for 29% of the 281 film productions in the UK made between October 2020 and June 2022, and 36% of eligible productions.
More than 100,000 jobs for cast and crew were supported and 48,500 full-time jobs both directly in the sector and indirectly through supply chains were created.
The report found total benefits generated by the scheme were 115 times greater than the cost of delivery. The scheme contributed £2.3bn to the economy thanks to the jobs created and impact on the sectors’ supply chains and wider economy, with costs to the government expected to be just £19.5m, which the report notes is is lower than anticipated thanks to work by film and TV companies to manage the risks of Covid during production. The expected value of compensation paid to registered production companies stands at £49.5m, approximately 10% of the £500m the government committed to pay in claims for the scheme.
A survey of producers showed , on average, 73% of registered productions would not have been able to spend the amount of money they did if the scheme did not exist. One in every six of production companies that participated in the scheme responded to the survey).
“The film and TV industry is one of the UK’s true success stories, delivering huge amounts of domestic and international economic value. The sector has recovered strongly from Covid-19, where factors ranging from lockdowns of filming locations through to sickness of cast members and crew posed a huge threat and stopped many productions in their tracks,” said Stephen Bristow, partner at Saffery Champness.
He continued: “What’s clear is that the government, and taxpayer, got real value for money from the scheme with a significantly higher return on investment than the government’s standard benchmark. Indeed, without the scheme in place the government would likely have faced significantly higher costs through supporting out of work film and TV employees through CJRS [Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme], SEISS [Self-Employment Income Support Scheme] or Universal Credit.”
Final figures will be published later this year, with a small number of claims remaining open, and being processed by the administrator, Marsh Commercial.
Last year saw a record £6.27bn of production spend in the UK.
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