Opera North hit as arts spending cut by £19m

ARTS Council England has outlined where the axe will fall as it implements £19m in "painful" cuts – with Opera North losing nearly £50,000.

The savings, announced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport last month, come on top of an earlier in-year reduction of 4m.

The Arts Council said its original 2010-11 budget had therefore been slashed by 23m from 468m to 445m.

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The body said it had shielded its regularly funded organisations to some extent by taking the "exceptional" step of using 9m from its "historic reserves" cash, which it has drawn down with Government permission.

But Opera North will suffer the sixth highest cut of 49,577. The Royal Opera House sees the highest cut at 142,185

The Arts Council said that had the 9m not been used, the organisations would have been hit with a three per cent cut.

They will bear the reductions in their final payments of the year, in most cases the quarterly payment due in January 2011, to give them as much time as possible to adjust.

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The chairman of Arts Council England, Dame Liz Forgan, acknowledged that for some the reductions would pose a "serious issue but we hope that it will not be so difficult that it can't be managed".

She added: "We've been able to do that because we are making exceptional use of 9m from the Arts Council's historic reserves."

She said the arrangements had the "full backing" of Arts Council members.

Arts Council England's budget for the three years covering 2011 to 2014 is expected to be decided this autumn.

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The body said that in making the cuts it had sought to protect art and the organisations who develop it "to the fullest extent possible".

The organisation will cut 1.8m from the grants of the two highest funded organisations which do not directly produce art – 1.6m from Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) and 200,000 from Arts and Business.

The general director of Opera North, Richard Mantle, said yesterday he had been fearing an even larger cut, but that the 50,000 reduction would still make life difficult for the 15m-a-year organisation .

"They've made cuts across the board, cutting every budget by 0.5 per cent, which obviously affects different organisations in different ways," he said.

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"We're very highly geared towards Arts Council funding so it does have more impact on us - but it has less of an impact than the three or four per cent I was fearing.

"We've also suffered a 50,00 cut in funding from Leeds City Council, so this is a double blow for us."

Foundation issues employment alert

Public sector cuts will have to be managed carefully otherwise the chances of new jobs and growth in private firms could be "wrecked".

The Work Foundation said most jobs created in parts of the UK in recent years were in the public sector, including three quarters in the North of England over the past decade.

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A spokeswoman said the regions' high dependence on publicly-funded employment has been exacerbated by relatively weak private sector growth over the past decade.

"Reducing the public deficit requires all parts of the UK to reduce public expenditure and increase economic growth.

"Public procurement of goods and services is a significant source of revenue for many private sector businesses.

"Spending by public sector employees also helps support regional employment in a wide range of sectors such as retail, tourism and leisure," she said.