As the dust settles on the government’s spending review, it is clear that a gulf
is emerging between the fortunes of different types
of museums.
While the funding levels for Arts Council England (ACE) and national museums have been protected, there are few crumbs of comfort for local authority museums that will be hit by a 53% cut in the local government grant, which will fall from £11.5bn in 2015-16 to £5.4bn in 2019-20.
The Local Government Association (LGA) says the cuts will have serious consequences on “cherished” local services, which will have to be drastically scaled back or lost altogether as councils are forced to do more with less and protect “life and death” services.
LGA chairman Gary Porter says: “Even if councils stopped filling in potholes, maintaining parks, closed all children’s centres, libraries, museums and leisure centres, and turned off every street light, they will not have saved enough money to plug the financial black hole they face by 2020.”
The Museums Association’s (MA) Cuts Survey, which will be published later this month, reveals that local authority museums experienced a bigger cut in funding than any other type of museum from 2013-14 to 2014-15. The data also suggests that in 2016, more museums will be forced to fully or partially close, introduce charges or reduce opening hours.
MA director Sharon Heal says continued cuts could mean that museum services are wiped out in some areas of the country. “We remain deeply concerned about the impact of the local authority budget cuts on the UK’s civic museums, and on the huge number of people who visit them,” she says.
“We believe that civic and local museums up and down the country will face real difficulties because of local authority funding cuts over the 2015-20 period – particularly those in less well-off areas.”
A lack of funding has already resulted in several high-profile closures, including the Snibston Discovery Museum in Coalville, Leicestershire. Towards the end of last year, Lancashire County Council proposed closing five museums this spring, and the MA’s Cuts Survey indicates that several other local authorities are expected to follow suit.
Closure raises significant concerns about the safety of the collections – a situation that’s further complicated if a collection is recognised by the arts council as outstanding, and has been sustained by large amounts of money by a primary funder.
For example, the textile industry collections at Queen Street Mill and Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, which are part of Lancashire Museums, are Designated, because they hold original machines still in working order and preserved in situ.
The mills are also listed as “scheduled monuments”, which Historic England defines as being deserving of protection. The Heritage Lottery Fund has invested £919,400 in the Museum of Lancashire and £720,000 in Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, which could be clawed back if the sites close.
Concern for collections
Many local authority museums are concerned about what closures might mean for their collections. A museum professional who oversees museums and galleries for a large local authority said that local collections are not given the recognition they deserve, and putting items into storage incurs high costs with no public benefit.
“Often, collections are integral to a listed building, for example, working mill machinery in a Grade I-listed mill building,” says the source.
“Surely no one is literally suggesting scrapping the collections? Multimillion-pound artworks always get the coverage when someone tries to sell collections. The bulk of local museum collections aren’t artworks, but the social and cultural history of a local community, its archaeology and its ephemera, which may have little financial value, are irreplaceable.”
Block grants to the devolved nations will suffer a real-terms reduction in the resource and capital allocations for Scotland (-1.3%), Wales (-1.1%) and Northern Ireland (-1.3%) over the next four years. Although budgets have not been set for devolved administrations, many local authority funded museums and their collections in those nations face an uncertain future.
Museums Journal has been told that three sites run by Swansea Museum could close, but the council has denied this claim. A source close to the museum, who didn’t want to be named, says staff have been verbally informed about the possible closure of Tramshed, the museum’s collections centre that houses about 90% of its artefacts, and the pontoon, where three heritage boats are docked, including the Olga, built in 1909.
A spokesman for Swansea City Council says there are no proposals to close the sites, but confirms that the council is considering a 50% cut to its cultural services budget by 2018-19, which would deliver savings of £300,000.
It is understood that the annual cultural services budget is £594,000 and that if the cuts are approved, the museum’s workforce would have to be reduced by half. The council declined to comment on this point.
Admission charges
There are also concerns that local authority museums will not just be divided from the rest of the sector on financial circumstance alone, but also on the point of admission charges.
It is ironic, says John Roles, the head of Leeds Museums and Galleries, that the spending review has reiterated the government’s commitment to maintain free entry to national museums, while introducing cuts that will force many civic museums to close or introduce charges.
“Charging might work for some, such as a museum in a tourist city like York or Brighton, where maybe 80% of users are tourists expecting to pay. But in industrial cities with large and diverse collections that have been built up over 200 years or so, where the audience is more likely to be 75% local, introducing charging suddenly after that long is not so straightforward,” he says.
Fears allayed as ACE and national museums have their budgets frozen
National museums escaped the worst of the cuts. The budgets of Arts Council England (ACE) and England’s national museums were frozen, which came as a relief to directors and trustees, some of whom, Museums Journal understands, were modelling for cuts of up to 40% over three years.
Instead, the spending review said funding for museums and the arts would be maintained in cash terms until 2019-20. According to calculations from the National Museum Directors’ Council (NMDC), this means a 5%-7% cut in real terms over the next four years.
Diane Lees, the chairwoman of the NMDC and the director general of Imperial War Museums, said this was a good outcome for national museums, which have shown their worth, and provided the government with the evidence it needed to keep investing in them.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport received a cut of 5%, including a 20% reduction to its administration budget – worrying for a department that has been heavily stripped of funding and staff over the years.
Earlier this year, Wilf Stevenson, Labour’s House of Lords spokesman for culture, described it as “virtually a non-department”. The spending review also confirmed the much-anticipated sale of Blythe House, which stores more than two million objects for the British Museum, Science Museum, and Victoria and Albert Museum.
George Osborne said £150m would be invested in museum storage to replace Blythe House and support the development of a campus for the Royal College of Art.
What tax changes mean for museums
In his spending review speech, chancellor George Osborne confirmed that local authorities in England would retain 100% of business rates by the end of this parliament’s term.
The Department for Communities and Local Government will consult on the changes, which are part of a package of reforms that will result in the local government grant being phased out and additional responsibilities devolved to local authorities.
While the changes to business rates will bring in £26bn in revenue that can be spent on local services, some feel it will disadvantage poorer areas that have fewer businesses.
Nick Forbes, the leader of Newcastle City Council, told The Guardian: “The impact of removing government grants and leaving the city dependent upon taxing businesses would leave us short by £16m a year, on top of the cuts we are already making. If these issues are not addressed, rich councils will get richer at the expense of the rest of us.”
The reform of business rates will give local councils the power to set their own rates, but there was no spending review update on whether charitable rate relief would be protected.
An announcement on this is expected in the next budget. The Association of Independent Museums (AIM) is concerned about the potential implications of this for discretionary and mandatory rate relief, both of which are enjoyed by museums run as charitable trusts.
In other spending review measures, the government will be looking at a new tax relief to help museums and galleries to showcase more of their work and support new exhibitions.
AIM’s executive director, Tamalie Newbury, says: “It is essential that this relief is developed in a way that enables museums of all sizes across the country to benefit. We will be pressing to ensure this is the case as the government looks at proposals further.”
While the funding levels for Arts Council England (ACE) and national museums have been protected, there are few crumbs of comfort for local authority museums that will be hit by a 53% cut in the local government grant, which will fall from £11.5bn in 2015-16 to £5.4bn in 2019-20.
The Local Government Association (LGA) says the cuts will have serious consequences on “cherished” local services, which will have to be drastically scaled back or lost altogether as councils are forced to do more with less and protect “life and death” services.
LGA chairman Gary Porter says: “Even if councils stopped filling in potholes, maintaining parks, closed all children’s centres, libraries, museums and leisure centres, and turned off every street light, they will not have saved enough money to plug the financial black hole they face by 2020.”
The Museums Association’s (MA) Cuts Survey, which will be published later this month, reveals that local authority museums experienced a bigger cut in funding than any other type of museum from 2013-14 to 2014-15. The data also suggests that in 2016, more museums will be forced to fully or partially close, introduce charges or reduce opening hours.
MA director Sharon Heal says continued cuts could mean that museum services are wiped out in some areas of the country. “We remain deeply concerned about the impact of the local authority budget cuts on the UK’s civic museums, and on the huge number of people who visit them,” she says.
“We believe that civic and local museums up and down the country will face real difficulties because of local authority funding cuts over the 2015-20 period – particularly those in less well-off areas.”
A lack of funding has already resulted in several high-profile closures, including the Snibston Discovery Museum in Coalville, Leicestershire. Towards the end of last year, Lancashire County Council proposed closing five museums this spring, and the MA’s Cuts Survey indicates that several other local authorities are expected to follow suit.
Closure raises significant concerns about the safety of the collections – a situation that’s further complicated if a collection is recognised by the arts council as outstanding, and has been sustained by large amounts of money by a primary funder.
For example, the textile industry collections at Queen Street Mill and Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, which are part of Lancashire Museums, are Designated, because they hold original machines still in working order and preserved in situ.
The mills are also listed as “scheduled monuments”, which Historic England defines as being deserving of protection. The Heritage Lottery Fund has invested £919,400 in the Museum of Lancashire and £720,000 in Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, which could be clawed back if the sites close.
Concern for collections
Many local authority museums are concerned about what closures might mean for their collections. A museum professional who oversees museums and galleries for a large local authority said that local collections are not given the recognition they deserve, and putting items into storage incurs high costs with no public benefit.
“Often, collections are integral to a listed building, for example, working mill machinery in a Grade I-listed mill building,” says the source.
“Surely no one is literally suggesting scrapping the collections? Multimillion-pound artworks always get the coverage when someone tries to sell collections. The bulk of local museum collections aren’t artworks, but the social and cultural history of a local community, its archaeology and its ephemera, which may have little financial value, are irreplaceable.”
Block grants to the devolved nations will suffer a real-terms reduction in the resource and capital allocations for Scotland (-1.3%), Wales (-1.1%) and Northern Ireland (-1.3%) over the next four years. Although budgets have not been set for devolved administrations, many local authority funded museums and their collections in those nations face an uncertain future.
Museums Journal has been told that three sites run by Swansea Museum could close, but the council has denied this claim. A source close to the museum, who didn’t want to be named, says staff have been verbally informed about the possible closure of Tramshed, the museum’s collections centre that houses about 90% of its artefacts, and the pontoon, where three heritage boats are docked, including the Olga, built in 1909.
A spokesman for Swansea City Council says there are no proposals to close the sites, but confirms that the council is considering a 50% cut to its cultural services budget by 2018-19, which would deliver savings of £300,000.
It is understood that the annual cultural services budget is £594,000 and that if the cuts are approved, the museum’s workforce would have to be reduced by half. The council declined to comment on this point.
Admission charges
There are also concerns that local authority museums will not just be divided from the rest of the sector on financial circumstance alone, but also on the point of admission charges.
It is ironic, says John Roles, the head of Leeds Museums and Galleries, that the spending review has reiterated the government’s commitment to maintain free entry to national museums, while introducing cuts that will force many civic museums to close or introduce charges.
“Charging might work for some, such as a museum in a tourist city like York or Brighton, where maybe 80% of users are tourists expecting to pay. But in industrial cities with large and diverse collections that have been built up over 200 years or so, where the audience is more likely to be 75% local, introducing charging suddenly after that long is not so straightforward,” he says.
Fears allayed as ACE and national museums have their budgets frozen
National museums escaped the worst of the cuts. The budgets of Arts Council England (ACE) and England’s national museums were frozen, which came as a relief to directors and trustees, some of whom, Museums Journal understands, were modelling for cuts of up to 40% over three years.
Instead, the spending review said funding for museums and the arts would be maintained in cash terms until 2019-20. According to calculations from the National Museum Directors’ Council (NMDC), this means a 5%-7% cut in real terms over the next four years.
Diane Lees, the chairwoman of the NMDC and the director general of Imperial War Museums, said this was a good outcome for national museums, which have shown their worth, and provided the government with the evidence it needed to keep investing in them.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport received a cut of 5%, including a 20% reduction to its administration budget – worrying for a department that has been heavily stripped of funding and staff over the years.
Earlier this year, Wilf Stevenson, Labour’s House of Lords spokesman for culture, described it as “virtually a non-department”. The spending review also confirmed the much-anticipated sale of Blythe House, which stores more than two million objects for the British Museum, Science Museum, and Victoria and Albert Museum.
George Osborne said £150m would be invested in museum storage to replace Blythe House and support the development of a campus for the Royal College of Art.
What tax changes mean for museums
In his spending review speech, chancellor George Osborne confirmed that local authorities in England would retain 100% of business rates by the end of this parliament’s term.
The Department for Communities and Local Government will consult on the changes, which are part of a package of reforms that will result in the local government grant being phased out and additional responsibilities devolved to local authorities.
While the changes to business rates will bring in £26bn in revenue that can be spent on local services, some feel it will disadvantage poorer areas that have fewer businesses.
Nick Forbes, the leader of Newcastle City Council, told The Guardian: “The impact of removing government grants and leaving the city dependent upon taxing businesses would leave us short by £16m a year, on top of the cuts we are already making. If these issues are not addressed, rich councils will get richer at the expense of the rest of us.”
The reform of business rates will give local councils the power to set their own rates, but there was no spending review update on whether charitable rate relief would be protected.
An announcement on this is expected in the next budget. The Association of Independent Museums (AIM) is concerned about the potential implications of this for discretionary and mandatory rate relief, both of which are enjoyed by museums run as charitable trusts.
In other spending review measures, the government will be looking at a new tax relief to help museums and galleries to showcase more of their work and support new exhibitions.
AIM’s executive director, Tamalie Newbury, says: “It is essential that this relief is developed in a way that enables museums of all sizes across the country to benefit. We will be pressing to ensure this is the case as the government looks at proposals further.”
