Platform

Final salary pension schemes like those operated by the Arts Councils of Wales, Scotland and England (p3) are now all but extinct, and news that the Arts Council Retirement Plan is facing a £17.1m deficit can hardly be a great surprise. All three arts councils have, via different means, done their best to act in their employees best interests and keep their pension schemes going in difficult circumstances. Employer contributions by the Scottish Arts Council have nearly doubled in the past four years and the same is pretty much the case at Arts Council England. Meanwhile, at the Arts Council of Wales, the decision was taken to make a big payment from Lottery and managed funds  a kind of pay now, buy later approach. Other major arts organisations are feeling the same pinch. Last month the Royal Opera House began negotiations with staff and unions about how to deal with an £8m deficit in its pension fund.
employer contribution to their pensions: only 47% of respondents to ArtsProfessionals salary survey (p9) receive any pension contributions from their employer  let alone the ultimate security of a final salary scheme. Increasingly it seems that the arts sector is developing into a two-tier structure. Funding bodies like the arts councils are in a position to decide how their staff should be treated and reward them appropriately to their skills and responsibilities. Local authorities have solid union-negotiated pay and benefit scales to ensure that their staff secure a reasonable level of pay and decent conditions of service. The rest of the sector  the bit that mainly creates the art  gets the left-overs when the funding system has taken its cut. This is seldom sufficient to enable arts organisations to offer their staff the levels of pay and benefits they would enjoy if they were to work on the funders side of the fence. To rectify the situation would inevitably mean public funding being used to support fewer arts organisations, but with higher levels of funding: not the most palatable of solutions. The only real alternative is to put more effort into exploring new business models for creating financially sustainable arts organisations, and aim to reduce our dependence on public subsidy. Hobsons choice then really&

Liz Hill and Brian Whitehead
Co-editors