DCMS and sponsored bodies could save millions on office accommodation.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and its 24 sponsored bodies, including Arts Council England (ACE), the UK Film Council, the National Endowment for Sport and the Arts, and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, have been criticised by a Government watchdog for inefficiency in their spending on office space. The National Audit Office (NAO) estimates that together the 24 organisations are wasting £4.2m every year on unnecessary space and declared that across the culture, media and sport sector the office accommodation is not managed at a strategic level. The report makes a number of recommendations. Chief among these is that organisations should maintain an accurate assessment of the costs of office space per member of staff working there and ensure that the space per person conforms to recommended standards. It also suggests the reorganisation of offices into more space-efficient layouts, sharing offices with other organisations, and increased desk-sharing.
Combined, the Department and all its bodies, which include sport and culture bodies as well as Lottery distributors, spend a total of £43m every year on office costs. ACE, which spends £5.8m annually on renting and servicing office space, had the largest portfolio of all the organisations, with space in 28 different buildings, 15 of which were local offices for the Creative Partnerships programme. The DCMS itself, with four central London offices, spends £9.7m annually on office space.
The report also looked at the size of office spaces and the numbers of staff working in them. On average, staff working for the organisations surveyed enjoyed 15.9 square metres of office space each. This figure, reached by dividing the total surface area of office space by average staff numbers, was well above 14.5 square metres, the average space recommended by the British Council for Offices, the body which sets industry standards. The NAO has calculated that if the organisations were to reduce office space per staff member to this recommended level, the sector would save £4.2m a year. While the report notes ACE has an aim to achieve a standard of 13 to 14 square metres per person for their offices, currently the average space per person is 14.9 square metres.
Calculations for ACE figures are further complicated by discrepancies between the reported numbers of staff across the organisation. In the NAO report, the figures for which were compiled by surveys of the sponsored bodies, ACE declares its staffing level as being at 894. However, in its Annual Report and Accounts for the same period (2004/05), a total of 825 staff was declared. As ArtsProfessional went to press, nobody at ACE was in a position to explain this discrepancy fully, but ACE has undertaken to give a full breakdown of the figures it provided to the NAO, and suggested that the difference might be accounted for by sub-let office space.