News and Policy brief - July 2010
In this month's Policy Brief, news on the Emergency Budget, the cultural agenda and announcements on policy and funding cuts. Also read on for news on higher education issues and Crafts Council research
1) Emergency Budget and Funding Cuts – Impacts for Culture
Emergency Budget
As we reported in last month’s brief, indications of long term government spending plans were announced in the Emergency Budget on June 22nd, and all eyes were on the Chancellor last month as he set out an austere new package of spending cuts and tax increases. In his ‘tough but fair’ budget George Osborne outlined how the Government plans to tackle the fiscal deficit and its vision for rebalancing the economy by promoting growth across the regions and sectors – we discuss economic rebalancing in the context of NESTA’s recent report further down the brief.
Precise details of cuts to individual government departments will only be announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review on October 20th, but some policies set out in the budget will impact the cultural sector.
- VAT will be increased to 20 per cent by January 4th 2011, indicating a rise in costs to the sector and in the costs of services it provides. – Non-protected government departments (including DCMS) will undergo average budget cuts of 25 per cent over the next four years (although this may not be distributed evenly across departments) inevitably meaning less public money available for culture.
Ahead of the budget and Comprehensive Spending Review the Government issued the Spending Review Framework, which outlines how and when decisions will be made. It focuses on tackling the deficit through major efficiency drives in public sector spending, including reductions to operational costs and cutting out waste and lower priority spending. Measures include a ministerial responsibility for identifying savings and value for money in each central government department and consultations on efficiency with experts from the public sector and beyond. The document also promises that as far as possible spending which generates high economic returns and frontline services will be protected
John Penrose, Minister for Tourism and Heritage, is reportedly responsible for efficiency savings in the department. The full Spending Review Framework is available here
Further DCMS Cuts
As reported in our June brief, DCMS saw its budget reduced by £88m in the first round of government spending cuts. This resulted in a 3 per cent cut for all funded bodies and a 4 per cent cut for Arts Council England this financial year. Last month the department announced further cuts totalling £73 million. Full details of DCMS cuts are available here
Arts Council England Cuts
Days before the budget, the Arts Council announced how the immediate £19 million cut, to its 10/11 budget would be apportioned.
£1.8 million was shaved from the budgets of ACE’s Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) equating to 0.5 per cent each with additional cuts made to Creativity Culture and Education (CCE) and Arts & Business. ACE will also trim an additional £0.4 million from its operating costs and save £6 million by postponing a major public engagement programme.
The true impact of cuts was mitigated by the use of £9 million from ACE’s historic reserves, access to which had previously been denied. A further £7 million from ACE’s reserves has been recalled by DCMS for use by the Department in 2010/11. The £19 million cut is in addition to earlier in-year reductions of £4 million meaning a total cut of £23 million to the 2010/11 budget. Although most RFOs were cushioned from the full extent of cuts in 2010/11 the ACE budget for the next three years will only be decided in the autumn. ACE Chair, Dame Liz Forgan commented:
“The financial climate is tough, but the arts remain a compelling case for public investment. We will continue to put that case to government, and to make it clear that now reserves have been spent, the burden of any further cuts will fall on funded organisations.”
The full statement is available here
2) Developments in Central Government
Greater Freedoms for Schools and Academies
Ministers in the Department of Education continued to spell out the new Government’s ambitions to increase freedoms for schools and colleges.
In a speech delivered in Birmingham, Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove stressed the importance of greater autonomy for head teachers and for schools in shaping their own curriculums. He also followed up on the Academies Bill, reporting that 77 per cent of ‘outstanding’ schools had made enquiries about applying for Academy status.
Later in the month Gove made a Department of Education statement announcing the processes through which groups, from teachers and parents to charities, can establish so called Free Schools.
Minister of State for Schools, Nick Gibb, also announced further freedoms for sixth form colleges and schools. He said that schools and colleges will now be allowed to choose how many and which Diplomas they offer. Bureaucracy around monitoring will also be relaxed with the abolition of ‘surveys of learner views’ and routine Ofsted inspections for ‘outstanding’ sixth form colleges.
Providing schools and colleges with greater freedoms to shape their own curriculums may open up opportunities for more craft teaching, but as we reported last month the new primary curriculum, which would have placed more emphasis on craft, art and design, has been dropped under the coalition government.
Higher Education Cuts
Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, has written a revised grant letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England providing details of the £200 million budget cuts for universities announced by the Government in May. Some cuts will fall in this academic year which will be particularly difficult to manage as it ends in only a few weeks time. Universities will also be expected to contribute to the £100 million worth of efficiency savings in BIS in 2010/11. Read the letter here
Funding for university places has also been reduced under the new Government. Labour promised an extra 20,000 new places of which the coalition government will deliver 10,000. UCAS figures suggest that there will be 16 per cent more applicants for the coming academic year.
The Emergency Budget spelled further bad news for the sector. According to Times Higher Education, a rise in VAT rates will be particularly challenging for universities as they cannot charge VAT on most services they produce making them unable to recover the VAT they pay on costs. Universities will also be hit by the 25 per cent reductions to departmental budgets in the autumn.
In a speech at Oxford Brookes University Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts said that conclusions on tuition fees and student financing will wait for Lord Browne’s report in the autumn. He did however propose the introduction of an external exam system which he believes would be more cost effective and improve the comparability of university qualifications. His speech is available from BIS
Last month we reported on a publication by university think-tank, the Higher Education Policy Unit, which concluded that genuine comparability between degrees was neither feasible nor necessarily desirable.
Skills and Apprenticeships
Skills Minister, John Hayes, continued to champion the importance of skills and apprenticeships. In a speech given at the City and Islington College he described skills across the board as ‘economically vital’, but also advocated a reassessment of our valuation of skills from the purely economic to the economic and socio-cultural, and for recognition of the personal fulfilment and professional development enabled through building skills and apprenticeships.
“Learning a skill to do a job should lead into learning for pleasure or self-fulfilment, and vice versa. But more the acquisition of practical skills is virtuous for its own sake as it instils purposeful pride”.
Read the full speech here
The emphasis on skills and apprenticeships is reflected in a refocus of government spending, with £200 million to be taken from Train to Gain, the majority of which will be used to pay for 50,000 new apprenticeships this year. Further Education Colleges were exempt from the first round of spending cuts in May.
It is good to see recognition from Ministers – provided it translates into policy – of the different values associated with skills. Many adult education craft courses at FEs lost funding because they were perceived as ‘hobby’ courses.
Abolition of RDAs
In the Emergency Budget the Government announced that Regional Development Agencies will be replaced by Local Enterprise Partnerships, which will bring together different councils and businesses and are likely to be headed by locally-elected leaders. According to Centre for Cities think-tank, LEPs will probably cover transport, housing, skills, regeneration and other areas of economic development.
The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg also announced a new Regional Growth Fund of £1 billion for areas that will be particularly affected by public sector cuts. Further details of the Regional Growth Fund and LEPs will be set out in a forthcoming White Paper on local and regional growth.
We will be watching how the Regional Growth Fund is distributed and looking at how LEP clusters develop, as well as the management of the skills portfolio at LEP level.
3) Recent publications and announcements from the sector
Crafts Council Research
Last month the Crafts Council launched three major pieces of research at the Assemble conference. Full details are available in Rosy Greenlees’ bulletin and on the Crafts Council website
Rebalancing Act
NESTA has published the report Rebalancing Act on the much debated issue of economic rebalancing. Focussing on the concept of balance between different sectors, the report considers four possible models for future growth and the types of government intervention needed to foster growth. It favours a combination of two possible scenarios – high-tech flourishing and widespread investment in innovation across all sectors in the UK economy, including high-tech industries. The creative sector is given a special mention for its potential, along with other innovative sectors, to develop new products, services and creative output. The report is available here
Your Freedom
In line with its Big Society agenda the Government has launched the website Your Freedom, which enables members of the public to post, comment on and vote for ideas that could inform government policy, with a focus on removing unnecessary regulation. Topics include cutting business and third sector regulations, which may generate material relevant to small businesses in the craft sector.
We have proposed dropping the tax on winners of open-entry award schemes. If you agree vote here
A Standard Charge Approach
The publication by the Arts Council England and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council of Arts, Museums and New Development: A Standard Charge Approach, may be relevant to people in the craft sector who work in publicly funded settings including museums and galleries. The report forms part of the broader Culture and Sport Toolkit and sets out recommendations for Standard Charges for local authorities in the development of new cultural infrastructure, such as museums and galleries. Read the publication here
Taking Part
ACE has published the latest data from Taking Part, a large-scale survey of cultural participation across England. The survey has been running since 2005 and data is now available about attendance and participation in creative activities for 2008/9. Artform specific briefings will be available later in the summer but we have drawn out some statistics relevant to the craft sector.
Data shows high levels of national participation in craft activities and attendance to craft exhibitions. Textile crafts were found to be the most popular form of participation nationally and 11 per cent of the population were shown to have visited a craft exhibition once in the past year, which is only one percentage point lower than attendance levels for artforms such as pantomimes and carnivals. The most popular artform in terms of attendance was live music events, with average national attendance rates of 27 per cent.
Particularly high levels of engagement in culture were found in the East, South East and South West which are also the most affluent regions in England. In these regions attendance at craft exhibitions was higher than the national average and participation in a craft activity was either higher or on a par with national figures.
Significantly, in the least affluent regions the North East, North West, West Midlands and York attendance to cultural activities including craft exhibitions was commonly lower than the national average but participation in the category ‘other craft’ activities was either higher than or equal to the national average. Data is available on the ACE website
Destination of Leavers from Higher Education – Year 2008/9
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has published statistics on the destination of graduates from the 2008/9 academic year. Findings show that fewer graduates from full-time first degrees, foundation degrees and postgraduate degrees are in full-time employment compared with graduates from the 2007/8 academic year. The biggest increase in unemployment, of 3 per cent, was in the category of full time graduates from first degrees. Unemployment rates for this group varied between subjects and included those which have traditionally had low rates of unemployment, such as medicine. Findings are on the HESA website
UCAS Tariff
The UCAS Tariff, the points based system used to assess the qualifications of applications to higher education courses, is to be adjusted to include a wider range of qualifications. UCAS plans to undertake a two year review of the Tariff and the changes will not affect students applying in 2010/11.
epic Awards 2010
Voluntary Arts England has launched the epic awards 2010 which aim to showcase the achievements of the voluntary art sector. Amateur groups, including those working in craft, are invited to nominate themselves for one or more of the following categories; engagement, partnerships, innovation and creativity. Winners will be showcased on the epic awards website, they will also receive advice about how to develop networks and improve engagement. Click here to apply.
4) Parliamentary Round Up
Select Committees
Select Committees Chairs have been appointed in the House of Commons. John Whittingdale, Conservative MP for Maldon, retained his position unopposed as chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. He has a political interest in broadcasting and media and has previously been a member of Health, Information, Liaison and Trade and Industry committees. Other relevant appointments include Labour MP Adrian Bailey who has replaced the Conservative MP Peter Luff as Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. The Education Committee will now be chaired by Conservative MP Graham Stuart and will replace the previous government’s Children Schools and Families Committee. Labour will continue to chair the Communities and Local Government Committee, but with a new chair Clive Betts MP, who is a former member.
Official committee membership is yet to be published but some parties are beginning to announce members ahead of the parliamentary confirmation. There will be plenty of new faces on the Culture Media and Sport Committee with only two Labour MPs and one Conservative MP likely to retain membership.
In the Lords a proposal was put forward by the Communications Committee to establish a Select Committee with specific responsibility for media and creative industries. Read the proposal here (p8).
DCMS Questions
DCMS Ministers took their first oral questions in parliament last month. The debate strayed somewhat from strictly departmental issues and only touched on the arts in the context of lottery funding. John Penrose reaffirmed the Government’s pledge to channel more lottery money into the arts, he specified that each of the major groups of good causes – the arts, heritage and sport – will have £50 million more of lottery shares a year from 2012. Read the official exchange here
In written answers to DCMS Jeremy Hunt provided details of funding cuts department’s associated NDPBs required to reduce their budget by 3 per cent. See the Hansard table (p112) showing the list of NDPBs and funding reductions and allocations for 2010/11 compared with funding for the past three years.
