Henley: 'Many cities interested in hosting ENO'

A number of cities across England have expressed an interest in hosting English National Opera (ENO) in the wake of it being dropped from the National Portfolio, Arts Council England (ACE) Chief Executive Darren Henley has said.

Appearing before the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Henley told MPs he believes ENO can continue to perform at its London home, the Coliseum, if it establishes a base elsewhere in the country.

As part of the funding decisions announced by ACE last month, ENO was one of a number of arts organisations to be removed from the National Portfolio, with ACE suggesting it could potentially move to Manchester and offering it £17m over three years to relocate.

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However the idea has been criticised by ENO which has warned it will be forced to close if made to move, while MPs have called for government intervention to reverse the decision.

"We still would imagine English National Opera will be performing large scale opera at the Coliseum in the future," Henley told members of the DCMS Select Committee, explaining the decision.

"But we also imagine they might be doing opera of different scales in other places. It may be in Manchester - and just to be absolutely clear - they were not instructed by us to move to Manchester, it was an option.

"I know around the country there are many elected mayors who are very interested to see if they could host a company like English National Opera in their cities."

Henley did not name which mayors are interested, but local authority areas with directly elected mayors include cities such as Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle.

Moving money

Henley went on to explain the reasoning behind the decision.

"I absolutely don't think ENO is failing as an organisation," he said. 

"We have to deal with the reality of the funding envelope within which we work. We needed to move money out of London. 

"We looked very carefully and thought very hard about how we would do that. In our last funding round the top four organisations in London had 43% of the London budget. 

"To make the sort of shift that we would need to do within London it was inevitable there would be challenges for us at every price point of every organisation.

"With English National Opera we absolutely believe in them as an organisation and I think they do excellent work. 

"What we are saying to them now is because of the funding requirements we have got we need to think of a different way of operating."

Henley's appearance came on the same day that three senior MPs called on the Public Accounts Select Committee to investigate ACE's decisions.

A letter sent to Chair of the Public Accounts Committee Meg Hillier by Labour MPs Harriet Harman and Margaret Hodge, as well as Conservative MP Sir Bob Neill, said there was "no consultation wih ENO by either ACE or the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport before the decision was taken".

It added that ACE has "imposed a condition for obtaining further funds which is not possible for ENO to comply with".