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Dateline: 27th February, 2009
ACE to Reorganise In an effort to make £6.5m in savings, Arts Council England is undertaking a major review of its structure and organisation. In a briefing paper it says, "The Arts Council was asked by Government to reduce grant-in-aid administration costs by 15% by 2010-11. We also agreed that 15% savings should be made on our National Lottery costs, so that a total of £6.5 million could be found to go back into the arts, year on year, and this has already been factored into our budgets for 2010/11. Because of the level of savings already made by the Arts Council over the last few years, finding this amount of additional saving will involve far more than simple tinkering with the way we are currently structured." The proposals are:
In the new head office (formerly the national office), there will be five departments: Arts; Arts Planning and Investment; Advocacy and Communications; Resources and Chief Executive's Unit. This will reduce the number of staff needed from 168 to 112. The regional structure will also change. Although the nine regional offices will remain, planning, investment strategy and other budget decision-making will be based on four areas. Area executive directors will have the authority to decide how planning and funding are managed by and delegated to regional offices. The four areas will be North, Midlands and South West, East and South East, and London. The nine regional offices will lead on:
There will be a support centre based in Manchester which includes teams for enquiries, finance transactions, human resources operations, IT infrastructure and the service desk, and a Grants for the Arts centre to carry out assessment and monitoring processes, with close links to regional offices and head office, and decisions made at area level. This will also be based in Manchester alongside the North West office and support centre and will have forty staff. All in all there will be a staffing reduction from 622 to 473 across the organisation. Staffing in the regions will change as follows:
Right across the organisation, the staffing will change as follows:
Other savings will come from property, by co-locating London regional office with head office, reduced travel and subsistence budgets through better use of technology, and reductions in, for example, as telephone and small equipment budgets. There will now be three months of formal consultation with staff and unions on these proposals, which will run until the end of May. Final proposals from the chief executive and Executive Board, informed by comments made during the consultation, will be presented to National Council in July. The final structure will then be announced and implementation will begin over the summer. The new structure will be fully operational from April 2010.
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