Thank you. If I lead off, and just explain that the first important thing is that there are two very different scenarios for us, based on what happens with revenue and with capital. Both are very significant, and both have different implications. So, just to talk about revenue, a flat budget would be very challenging, but we've been told to model against a cut, and a cut that would be significant, and that will be enormously challenging for us. Clearly, like all other organisations and businesses, we are really struggling with rising costs and inflation. We've been very much impacted by the impact of COVID on our commercial operations. So, while visitor numbers are more or less recovering to where they were pre COVID, commercial activities aren't. Some commercial activities actually have pretty much gone—so, things like corporate hire, that were an important income stream for us, filming, which—. We work very closely with Creative Wales. We've benefited from filming, and the writers' strike has meant that there hasn't been more filming coming through.
So, what we're finding is a climate of increasing costs, challenging income—we've had to reforecast our commercial income projection for this year, which is very difficult—and pay awards that are putting significant pressure on our overall budget. So, in year, we have a significant challenge that we're likely to have to use our reserves to meet the cost of the pay rise in year, because it's more than we were advised to budget. But, for next year, we're having to look at a restructuring of the museum and a remodelling of what we do, in order to be able to adapt to what we think will be a new financial landscape. And that means we're going to have to probably be a smaller museum, in terms of we want to continue to deliver with excellence, so we don't believe it will be practical to apply a uniform major cut to every part of the museum, because you do everything then to a poor-quality level. So, we're going to have to be very targeted, and say, 'Actually, our main purpose is this, this and this, and we will protect that, and make sure we can deliver that', as I say, 'with excellence.' And that means, therefore, that we will need to stop certain programmes, perhaps change our opening arrangements, and look at the way we structure ourselves.
If there is a cut to capital, that would be potentially disastrous, because we have such a significant backlog of maintenance. The capital we receive has been increased in recent years, which has been very, very welcome, but we're still not able to keep even a level stage, a steady state, with the maintenance. So, the problem is escalating to a very worrying degree. We have basically indicated, across all the works, which are critical, which are serious et cetera. We can't even keep up with critical works. And at Cardiff in particular, at the National Museum Cardiff, we have a major problem with our mechanical, electrical and plumbing works there that, if we can't get those addressed, we will struggle to function. So, just to be able to get through with the critical works that we need, we would need twice the capital allocation that we have now. If the current capital allocation were reduced, we would have very big concerns for our collections.