Local authority spending has nearly halved over the past decade and could fall further still. Is Levelling Up the solution?
cassart.co.uk
English councils' cultural spending has nearly halved over the past decade, official figures reveal, as authorities prepare their budgets for the year.
Real terms spending fell by 43% between 2009/10 and 2020/21 - the equivalent of £2.65bn once inflation is accounted for.
Public Campaign for the Arts, which crunched the headline numbers, reports that amounts to half as much funding per person. Where culture spending was worth £116.57 per person across England in 2010, it's now just £59.50.
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ArtsProfessional analysed the data in more depth and found that, for the 325 authorities with complete data, culture funding in 2021 averaged just £43 per person.
Of those, 279 councils also have data from 2010, which shows average per-person culture spending of £183.93.
A lot of councils have changed their names or merged into combined authorities so it's not a complete picture.
But it does underline the swingeing cuts to local authority arts funding that place organisations on the back foot as they bid for continued grants.
Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Head of the Local Government Association's Culture, Tourism and Sport board, councils face pressure to reconsider funding non-statutory services like the arts in 2022.
"Prior to the pandemic, councils had already dealt with a £15bn real terms reduction to core government funding between 2010 and 2020."
Levelling Up?
Giving councils more control over cultural funding could mean more bang for their buck.
Agreed cultural compacts, or closer collaboration with funders at the least, would help direct funding towards projects that are a priority to local communities.
Arts Council England plans to work more closely with local authorities in its priority places, and Levelling Up will devolve decision making, but councils want to move away from competitive national funding processes.
Vernon-Jackson said councils remain the biggest public funders of culture, spending more than £1bn a year in England alone.
"They run a nationwide network of local cultural organisations, including 3,000 libraries, 350 museums, 116 theatres and numerous castles, amusement parks, monuments, historic buildings and heritage sites.
“Funding announced in the Spending Review and included in the Levelling Up White Paper is positive, but it is essential that culture funding can be coordinated at a place-based level by councils who know their communities best.”
Winners and losers
Some local authority areas have cut more than three-quarters of their arts funding since 2010.
Oadby and Wigston had the largest drop at 88%, followed by the London borough of Croydon (85%). The Greater London Authority's spending has fallen by 84%. Across the councils with comparable data, the average drop was 38%.
Just 19 councils have increased their cultural spend over the past decade, and only seven of these have outpaced inflation. Mid Devon District Council has recorded the highest increase in spending of 121%, followed by Brentwood (85%) and The Broads Authority (64%).
Councils' average culture spend per person has fallen by 42.6%. Several authorities including Portsmouth, Wolverhampton, West Devon, and Wokingham have cut spending per person by more than 90%.