ACE slashes regional powers

Funding decisions for Arts Council England’s largest regularly funded organisations (RFOs) are to be centralised, leaving its regional offices to fund those receiving less than £800,000 a year. Until now, only nine organisations – those receiving annual grants of over £5m – had their funding levels determined by ACE’s national office. This will now rise to 68, following a decision to reduce the Regular Funding Delegation Limit. The new policy, which means that Regional Councils are only able to ‘recommend’ funding relating to their major clients, was agreed at a National Council meeting in May, but has not been formally announced. When AP spoke to some of the RFOs that will be affected, it was clear that the new rules are not generally known.

ACE told AP that the change “forms part of an ongoing review of our internal decision-making processes in response to the McIntosh report and the Organisational Review”, and that it would be unlikely to affect funding decisions before the next funding review in 2011. Speaking to AP, the director of a London-based national touring company, who asked not to be named, said, “the rationale behind restructuring the regional offices was to have better paid and more highly qualified people in the regions… but they’re only empowered to make less important decisions – it just doesn’t make sense”. However, a spokesperson for ACE said that the decision “is not about a move to central control of larger-scale funding, it is about… using regional expertise and knowledge, combined with a national strategic overview of the arts,” and added that regional officers would continue to be involved in the process. As of January 2010, funding decisions relating to all RFOs will be informed by reports prepared by a team of assessors, who will feed their comments into an artistic evaluation of those organisations. Three hundred arts assessors will be appointed over the next two years. This is part of ACE’s response to the McMaster Report’s call to develop peer assessment (AP182). Andrew Nairne, ACE’s Executive Director Arts Strategy, said that ACE wants “people with knowledge and understanding of the arts, who will value the opportunity to see a wide range of work”. Whilst ACE has no plans to publish assessors’ reports, these and the authors’ names can be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act.

Further centralisation of ACE’s grant-making will take effect when the processing of Grants for the Arts (GfA) moves to Manchester, though the funding decisions themselves will continue to be made by regional offices. The new system will begin by March 2010: ACE claims that the changes will save 23% of administrative costs and “will provide an efficient and simplified application process [and] consistent advice for applicants”. During the transition, GfA will suspend new applications between 18 January and 26 February: decisions on applications received before 18 January will continue to be made throughout this time. Online applications will be possible for the first time and may be submitted from 1 March. ACE is also simplifying applications for less than £10,000, and pledging to inform applicants of decisions within six weeks.