The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has launched a tailored review of Arts Council England to consider whether it should continue to be a quango, as well as its overall effectiveness and governance arrangements.
Arts Council England is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) that distributes public and National Lottery funding to arts organisations. Between 2015 and 2018 it plans to have distributed £1.8bn.
The government carries out tailored reviews to “seek assurance of the continuing need, efficiency and good governance of public bodies”.
DCMS indicated it would conduct a review in a white paper earlier this year and published the terms of reference for the review last week.
The review will be split into two parts and the first part is to “consider the Arts Council’s position and its status as a DCMS-sponsored non-departmental public body”. This will include whether “the functions performed by the Arts Council remain appropriate for a NDPB”.
The second part will look at the Arts Council’s efficiency and effectiveness as well as its governance arrangements.
Althea Efunshile, deputy chief executive of Arts Council England, said: “Overall we think we are well placed for this review. In recent years we have acted to make our application processes more open and transparent, with decision-making criteria and award decisions published online. All our decisions are informed by local expertise in our offices across the country. Our annual stakeholder survey shows almost 80 per cent of our stakeholders are favourable towards us, and that two-thirds would speak highly of us.
“We have also managed to streamline our administrative costs, saving £10m a year since 2010, which has been invested in arts and culture. We have done this while maintaining our local presence and expertise. Today, our administration costs constitute less than 5 per cent of our budget, the result of a journey we’ve been on since 2001, when these costs made up 17 per cent of Arts Council and Regional Arts Boards budgets.”
DCMS is looking for feedback via an online survey which is open until 20 September.
