ACE pledges £2m savings following national office restructure.
Arts Council England (ACE) has unveiled plans for an organisational overhaul to reduce overheads and to create the right balance between the national and regional offices. The plans, which will see 42 redundancies and the closure of excess office space, are being viewed internally as one of the final steps in the process of the merger with the Regional Arts Boards, which began in 2003. ACE Chief Executive, Peter Hewitt, said the proposed changes were designed to deliver better advocacy for the arts, aiming to bring in considerably more investment from a variety of sources. The restructure will now go to a formal consultation with staff and unions before being introduced in the autumn.
Four broad departments will be created to oversee and manage ACEs operations: policy and innovation; performance and programmes; advocacy and communications; and resources. The policy and innovation department will provide national leadership and attempt to establish national partnerships for the arts. It will include artform specialists as well as staff working on diversity, arts participation, young people, sustainable communities and the creative economy. The performance and programmes staff will take responsibility for leadership on Lottery and Treasury investment and for Creative Partnerships. Advocacy and communications will deal with all internal and external communications, and the resources team will oversee the running of ACEs operations. This structure, which differs from some of the internal structures employed at regional offices, is aimed at making ACE more compatible with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as well as other Whitehall departments. A spokesman for ACE said the structure offered a clear sense of accountability. The performance and planning department will lead on the relationship with the DCMS, which we hope will provide greater clarity to that relationship, something we both know we need. The portfolio of arts organisations currently controlled by the national office, which includes Welsh National Opera and Arts & Business will be distributed to regional offices.
The announcement comes after months of speculation about the future for ACE, and in the wake of last years peer review (AP, Issue 113, 16 January) which called for a more streamlined national office. The proposed 42 job losses will come from the national offices full-time fixed-contract staff of 200, though there has been no reference made to future plans for up to 120 additional staff who work at the national office on freelance and temporary contracts. The ACE spokesman denied that the fixed contract redundancies would be mitigated by additional freelance contracts or by recruitment elsewhere: Additional staff will not be recruited in regional offices as a result of this move. The job losses, together with savings on office space, are estimated to make a net saving of £2m each year from April 2007. A further review of ACE staff numbers is planned for the autumn following the planned implementation of ACEs £6.4m IT system.