Andrew Whyte leaves the Arts Council next week, rather peremptorily it seems. The rumour is that he has been ousted by the new chair, Dame Liz Forgan, who is said to find him too susceptible to the disease of control freakery. In fact he has a big new job to go to, in the civil service proper as director of communications at DEFRA on about the same pay scale, so it’s hard to see how it is a move up. The truth is that in his three years he has both presided over ACE’s acknowledged biggest PR disaster, the funding cuts of 08, and the biggest opening to information from and about the Arts Council since Anthony Everitt was secretary general a generation ago. And if it hadn’t been for the latter, the former would not have happened.