Six regional directors made redundant under Arts Council England’s (ACE) current reorganisation plans will share nearly £700,000 in redundancy payoffs, according to recent figures. Four of these directors will share an additional £285,000 in pension payments from the West Yorkshire local authority pension scheme, which ACE employees were entitled to join before the regional arts boards were merged with ACE. According to ACE’s Annual Review, the total provision in the 2008/09 budget for one-off redundancy costs connected with the current reorganisation (AP199) was £4.8m (£3.2m for Grant in Aid staff and £1.6m for Lottery staff), compared with £1.1m in 2007/08. In response to questions from AP, ACE admitted that this was only “our current estimate of the costs”, and that the final costs would be known “once our redeployment process has been completed and the new structure has been implemented in April this year”. ACE redundancy payments currently total nearly £6m over the past two years. ACE has also confirmed that the efficiency savings of 15%, required by the Government for the financial year 2010/11, will be based on the 2007/08 administration figure of £42.9m. This excludes costs relating to the Creative Partnerships programme, which has now demerged from ACE to become a Regularly Funded Organisation. The Annual Review also showed that “Executive Directors and the Chief Executive would forgo individual performance bonuses for 2008/09 in the light of the current economic circumstances,” but “acknowledged the high level of performance from the Chief Executive and the Executive Board in delivering the Arts Council’s mission, efficiency savings and organisational transformation”. Querying this, AP was told that this acknowledgement referred to savings which are yet to be delivered in 2010/11, two years after the period covered by the report.
