Councils should ‘bear responsibility’ for cultural trust struggles

Local authorities should shoulder responsibility for the financial failures of cultural trusts established by them, a member of a council proposing a 24% cut to a trust it set up a decade ago has said.

Conservative-led Hampshire County Council is proposing to reduce Hampshire Cultural Trust's annual budget by £600,000 from £2.5m to £1.9m placing the future of five venues in doubt.

Speaking at a scrutiny meeting earlier this month where members of the council discussed the plans, Liberal Democrat Councillor Keith House said it would be “disingenuous” not to lay the blame for any subsequent venue closures with the council, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

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“Most of these trusts have been set up by local authorities in financial difficulty externalising facilities under the guidelines that they are charities and can raise money elsewhere,” said the Lib Dem councillor.

“We have seen right the way across the country so many trusts gradually sliding into failure after they’ve had facilities passed on to them by local authorities. And then the local authorities turn around and say, ‘Well, it wasn’t our failure; it was the trust’s failure, wasn’t it?’

The budget reduction is one of 13 measures Hampshire County Council has been asked to consider in an attempt to plug a £175m deficit for 2025/26. It is one of several local authorities in England making cuts to cultural spending as they seek to make substantial savings.

In January, the trust warned that if the proposed budget cuts go ahead, Ashcroft Arts Centre in Fareham, Westbury Manor Museum and Eastleigh Museum are expected to shut early next year, while Curtis Museum in Alton and Andover Museum and the Museum of the Iron Age are facing withdrawal by 2026.

Eastleigh Museum has been closed to the public since April 2022, while arts and community programming at Ashcroft Arts Centre will be paused from the end of September due to “operational challenges and realities of running a public programme in a venue that is under threat of closure”.

At the scrutiny meeting, House said that individual venue failures resulting from the budget cut are the council's responsibility, not the trust's.

“We have been the primary external funder of the trust over the last decade, and we still are," said House.

"And if we seriously think that any external organisation is capable of maintaining the same range of facilities with a very substantial loss of income, then we are kidding ourselves.

“So I think it’s a bit disingenuous, if not dishonest, to suggest we’re doing anything other than closing facilities as a result of this decision.”

'No option'

Hampshire County Council transferred the management and operation of its arts and museum services to the independently run trust in 2014.

The trust, which has been an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation since 2023, manages 24 venues, including museums, art galleries, art centres and historical attractions, 17 of which are leased from HCC.

For the last financial year, it reported a total income of £9.25m, an 11% increase from the previous year. Hampshire County Council and Winchester City Council provided 36% of its income, while 4% came from seven other local authorities.

The trust's Chief Executive, Paul Sapwell, previously said the organisation did not want to close any of its venues but that the reduction in local authority funding left “no option but to make some very difficult decisions”.

“We intend to mitigate the full effect of the funding challenge through a wider business plan that includes potentially taking on new, more financially sustainable venues, as well as growing existing areas of our business," he said. 

The £600,000 budget reduction is in addition to an incremental £400,000 cut by April 2027 in recognition of the transfer of historic property, The Great Hall, to the trust, which the council says will help it generate additional income.

A final decision on the funding cut will be made on October 14.