Arts Council England told to make £19 million of in-year cuts
Arts Council England has been told to make a total of £19 million of in-year cuts under Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s £6.2 billion programme of cost reductionss. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport was asked to make £88 million of savings - of which £27 million will come from the Olympics budget. A 3% cut will be made to the DCMS’ core budget, while a 3% cut will also be passed on to all bodies within the DCMS sector.
However, ACE is being hit with an additional £5 million of cuts - raising the total it is being asked to cut to £19 million.
These savings will have to be made to the already allocated budget for 2010/11.
According to a statement by DCMS, it is “discussing with ACE the use of historic reserves that it has been hitherto unable to access, which may allow extra spending this year to mitigate the overall reduction to the arts sector”.
“I have been clear that all parts of DCMS’s areas would need to play their part in meeting the challenge of reducing the deficit,” said culture secretary Jeremy Hunt. “I have asked our bodies to make these savings while protecting frontline services wherever possible, and without interrupting the Olympic programme.
“I understand that this will involve some difficult decisions, but the reality is that we face an incredibly tough public spending environment. Putting the economy back on its feet and restoring the nation’s finances are in the interests of all our sectors, particularly the arts and culture sectors which receive significant amounts of private finance.”
He added: “I will be doing all I can to help our sectors through the next few difficult years, and want to do all I can to ensure that never again are our sectors as vulnerable to sudden booms and busts in public funding.
“I have already announced a change in the Lottery shares to give more money to arts, sports and heritage, and as we implement this it will increase the income for these sectors. I am also looking to see how and where we can boost other sources of income to the sectors and make fundraising easier.”
In a statement responding to news of the cuts, Dame Liz Forgan, Chair of Arts Council England said:
"We all knew this year would be tough. We do not understand why we have received a higher percentage cut than other DCMS funded bodies.
“Making cuts within the financial year is very difficult. We will now need to carefully assess what this figure of £19m means. The Arts Council has already trimmed its own budgets by £4 million in 2010/11 so this takes our total reduction this year to £23 million.
“We will do our utmost to minimise the impact on the frontline but we cannot guarantee that there will be no effect. Only £23m (5%) of our overall grant-in-aid budget goes on running costs so the vast bulk of our income goes straight to art. It would therefore be impossible to meet a cut of this size from running costs alone. Use of our historic reserves, which the Department has not allowed us to use to date, will have to be agreed with our Trustees and the Charity Commission and their use will need to be in the best interests of the arts.
“What is most important is that we do our best to protect art and artists and that we get our decisions out as quickly as possible to give our organisations a chance to plan. We have a tough Spending Review ahead so we need to work closely with our Ministers and our arts organisations to make the best possible case.”
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