UK local council wants to cut all arts funding in latest austerity move

Suffolk County Council has announced plans to completely cut arts and culture funding from its budget, a move which could affect museums located in the county on the east coast of England. The council says it wants to cut its £500,000 core funding to the arts and museum sector from 2025 in a bid to make £64.7m of savings over two years.The Long Shop Museum, an industrial heritage museum in the town of Leiston, is one of the museums that might be at risk. Fraser Hale, the museum director, tells The Art Newspaper: “The Long Shop Museum is one of a small clutch of East Suffolk museums that received direct funding from Suffolk County Council. This stipend accounted for around 10% of our income each season and was primarily used to ensure that the museum was properly insured, and to subsidise the costs of school visits to the museum. Like others in our position, we’ll need to find that money, or equivalent savings, elsewhere after this year.”According to the council website, other museums that receive grant aid (council funding) include Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury and the Food Museum in Stowmarket; both institutions were contacted for comment.To assist with the transition to zero funding, £528,000 of Covid recovery money will be made available to arts and museum sector organisations for 2024/25 which, says the council, will fully cover the funding reduction for a year.The council adds that “along with local authorities up and down the country, [it] has been hit hard by inflation and rising demand for services such as children’s care, special educational needs and disabilities and home to school transport.” The council’s financial plans will be presented to its Scrutiny Committee meeting on 11 January.More and more UK councils are slashing arts funding—which is generally non-statutory (not mandated by law)— in a bid to balance their books. Last month Nottingham City Council proposed cutting its entire cultural budget after announcing bankruptcy (a four-week public consultation on the planned budget runs until 16 January). Woking Borough Council, Bristol City Council, and Birmingham City Council are among other local authority bodies also considering major reductions in their budgets for arts and culture services.