Power to the people?

The Government has devised a series of proposals to “strengthen the role of citizens and civic society”, “recast the relationship between the centre and the frontline” and “streamline central government for sharper delivery”. ‘Putting the Frontline First: smarter government’ lays out changes including working more closely with the third sector, new frameworks for national agencies and forcing cost savings on the Civil Service.

A stricter governance framework for arm’s length bodies (ALBs) and their sponsor departments is due be published shortly. The Government hopes to “identify opportunities to save at least £500m by reducing duplication between organisations and streamlining the ALB landscape where appropriate”. A merger between the UK Film Council and the British Film Institute, which was welcomed by the Chairs of both bodies, has already been announced (AP201). The Government also wishes to “ensure greater transparency and scrutiny of ALBs, for example by ensuring they publish more data on their performance and value for money”. Other proposals include savings on human resources and finance functions in agencies with more than 250 staff, and a reduction in spending on consultancy (by 50%) and marketing and communications (by 25%). A spokesperson for the DCMS told AP that it is not yet clear to what extent the DCMS and its ALBs including Arts Council England (ACE) and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) will be affected by the proposals. ACE and the MLA have already undergone extensive reorganisations with a view to cutting costs.
Other proposals include strengthening the Community Assets Programme, which encourages the transfer of under-used local authority assets, including buildings, to local organisations for community use, and the use of Social Impact Bonds to unlock funding for third sector work which deals with social problems. These could help arts organisations demonstrate their value in their local communities.
Additional plans to streamline the national performance framework by “reducing the number of national indicators (NIs) for local areas by April 2010, and making further reductions from 2011” may also be of concern. NIs pertaining to adult attendance at museums and galleries (NI10) and adult participation in the arts (NI11) are already among those which local authorities may voluntarily adopt. The National Campaign for the Arts said, “We would hope that any rationalisation of NI sets retains arts and culture indicators in recognition of the benefits participation in and engagement with the arts can bring to a local area.” Measuring these benefits is currently underway, with recently released data on NI10 and NI11 showing that adult attendance at cultural events and venues has at best remained the same and in some cases decreased. A progress report from the DCMS compares baseline data from 2008 with interim data from 2009, with information from 150 local authorities (County Councils, Unitary Authorities and London Boroughs). Thirty-one local authorities show a decrease in adult attendance at museums and galleries, while no increase at all is shown in either NI10 or NI11 for the whole of Greater London. Lucy Bedford, Arts Development Officer for Milton Keynes and trustee of nalgao, pointed out that “due to short lead-in times, those local authorities that adopted NI11 started the delivery phase of their engagement plans to meet NI11 targets after the first phase of data was being collected”. She said that the NI targets mean that local authorities were having to turn their focus “from children and the disengaged to adults and the engaged”.