A photo of the Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House's earned income from box office receipts alone has grown by £3.7m over the past 3 years.

Photo: Chris (CC BY-SA 2.0)

News

Earned income disparity compounds regional funding imbalance

The combined value of earned and contributed income generated by NPOs in London has grown by £71m since 2010, but the North East has seen growth of just £1m over the same period.

Liz Hill
2 min read

Booming box office receipts, increased trading and fundraising success swelled the annual income of London-based National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) by £71m between 2010/11 and 2012/13, but for the rest of the country, the picture was very different.

The only region to see significant growth in earned and contributed income was the West Midlands, where revenues from ticket sales, ancillary activities and royalties, together with funds raised from sponsorship, trusts, and donations, grew by £34m during the same 3-year period; but nearly £30m of this was generated by the reopening of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) venues, which had been closed for refurbishment during the previous three years.

Elsewhere in England, income growth over the period ranged from an extra £7.4m in Yorkshire, to just £1m in the North East.

A summary of NPOs’ earned and contributed income figures for this period is included in Arts Council England’s (ACE) ‘This England’, which forms the basis of its submission to the ongoing Culture Media and Sport Select Committee inquiry into ACE’s work.

Presented to illustrate the reduced dependence of the sector on Arts Council income, ACE’s analysis shows that NPOs’ total earned and contributed income increased by 9.3% over the past three years. But while noting “there is geographical variance”, this is not quantified and the report fails to expose the widely differing regional trends.

AP’s further analysis of ACE’s raw data shows how variation in the economic climate across the country has affected the arts. The increase in earned income by London-based NPOs was £43.5m, nearly three times the increase in the rest of England combined (£15.2m), if the impact of the RSC is excluded.

Earned income from box office receipts at the Royal Opera House alone grew by £3.7m. The highest growth outside the capital was in the South West, which saw a £4.8m rise, but in the North East earned income actually fell by £400k during the same time period.

ACE’s latest figures also confirm fears about the limited potential for regional arts organisations to reach challenging targets for fundraising and philanthropy. Fundraising efforts by NPOs in the capital raised an additional £27.7m of contributed income between 2010 and 2012, almost double that for the rest of England combined (£14m).