November 2007

The most welcome and reassuring news for many a day is the 2007 Pre-Budget Report from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport which confirms that a generous funding settlement has been reached to allow continued investment in the arts and cultural sections building on record investment over the past ten years and to ensure the DCMS’ sectors continue to thrive and flourish. The settlement will enable the Department to maintain funding for real term growth for arts, museums and galleries, including free access to national museums and contributing to the Cultural Olympiad. This helps quieten fears that the arts would lose funding to the huge demands of the Olympic Games, at least for three years. Responding to the news, Sir Christopher Frayling, Chair of Arts Council England, which will get an extra £50 million over the next three years, said: “This is a very good result. We have campaigned long and hard for this settlement and in the context of a tough spending round it is good to know that the government has listened to the case we put forward for the arts in England. This increase will allow us to build on the current excellent health of the arts. We now await the detail of our settlement so that we can set a budget and inform arts organisations of their funding for 2008-2011 as quickly as possible.” For this period ACE has the following priorities: taking part in the arts, children and young people, the creative economy, vibrant communities, internationalism, celebrating diversity. ACE has also confirmed plans to improve its support services including a new service centre in Manchester. Just over 160 staff are directly affected by the plans which will see about 50 posts moving out of London to Manchester and about 20 less jobs in these services. Taken together the proposed changes could reduce annual administrative costs by £750,000. Unions were briefed about the process and involved fully in the consultation. The dedication of existing staff has been fully recognised and proposals are being made to offer support and minimise redundancies. The support services plans will help the Arts Council to reduce its office space in London. Implementation of the new plans will begin immediately with the first service team operating from temporary offices in Manchester in the spring of 2008. The transfer of operations and new structures are expected to be complete by April 2009.