0.5% cuts across board
Despite Arts Council England having gone for an ‘equal misery for all’ programme to meet the governments demand for a £19m, 4%, in year cut, announced today, the government pledge to maintain front line services in the arts has been broken.

Regularly funded organisations will have .5% cuts, or an average of £2,000 each, and the cuts will not be applied until January to give organisations time to adjust programmes.

Cuts to RFOs would have been 3% had it not been for £9m being taken from ACE’s £18.4m reserve, and DCMS have taken another £7m from the reserve for as yet unexplained reasons, leaving £2.4m in the emergency fund.

Worst hit are Creative Culture and Education which loses £1.6m and Arts & Business, £200,000, a 4% reduction to each. Of the RFOs, the ten biggest funded take the brunt, led by the Royal Opera House with £142,000. Colin Tweedy of A&B said: ‘We will endeavour to continue to do our utmost to see private sector investment in culture grow in the years to come and that the Government’s wish to see philanthropy take centre stage is realised’.

‘For some it will be serious but we hope that it will not be so difficult that it cannot be managed’ said ACE chair Liz Forgan. Chief executive Alan Davey said the reason why ACE took a bigger hit than other DCMS NGOs was the existence of its reserve fund, but he said front line services would inevitably be affected.

The Arts Council now has to plan for expected worse cuts in the Comprehensive Spending Review in the autumn for 2011-2014, Forgan said.

Other savings have been made on a public engagement programme, audience development and partnership working with local authorities.

Meanwhile, DCMS has scrapped the planned Stonehenge Visitor Centre to save £17m, the BFI Southbank film centre (£45m), the theatre ticket scheme A Night Less ordinary (£100,000), and Find Your Talent (£2m).