Arts cuts hit NE hardest

Published: 4 December 2016
Reporter: Peter Lathan

Tom Watson MP Credit: Labour Party photograph

The North East has lost £13m in culture, heritage and arts funding since 2010, according to MP Tom Watson, Shadow Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. This is a £5 per head cut, larger than anywhere else in the country.

Nationally funding has been cut by £165m.

The cuts were all in local council budgets but Watson points out that they were the result of cuts in the support grants made by central government to local authorities.

Leaving the European Union will also, he claims, mean a loss of the €40m the Creative Europe Programme paid in support of cultural and creative organisations in the last two years. The North received £1.3m annually in recent years. The government has made no comment as to whether it will replace the European funding in whole or in part.

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