At this point we have a pretty clear picture of the impact of the cuts in purely financial terms.
The first round of cuts, announced in June, saw Arts Council England (ACE) announcing a 0.5% cut in the funding it provides to 808 “front-line” organisations. ACE also promised efficiency savings over and above the £6.5m it had already saved.
The Guardian quoted chief executive Alan Davey as saying that “many organisations would find it tricky or testing” to make a saving of 0.5%. Their Datablog section offered a breakdown, including the raw data and a visualisation, of the financial consequences.
The Comprehensive Spending Review of the 20th of October has now promised a further reduction of 30% in funding for ACE. In real terms, this means a reduction from £449.5m to £349m by 2014.
ACE’s own running costs will have to be slashed by 50%, on top of the 21% efficiency savings it has already found. This can be traced to Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt’s demand that ACE ensure that “front-line” organisations would only receive a 15% cut.
Charlotte Higgins discusses the fallacy of labelling some organisations as “front-line” and the government’s obfuscation of the figures here.
For the “front-line” organisations, the new budget tightening will mean a 10% cut in this financial year. Other bodies, deemed less essential, will be losing ACE funding outright.
We’ve updated the Guardian’s spreadsheet of the 18th of June to reflect this 10% cut. You can find the data here and an infographic below.
Arts & Cuts 