The Stage

ACE salaries rocket as arts funding stays frozen

Published Wednesday 9 February 2005 at 11:10 by Jeremy Austin

Arts Council England salaries have increased by an average of 66% in the past six years, despite a £10 million reorganisation in 2001 which was designed to cut costs, new research has revealed.

The figures, compiled by arts researcher Charles Morgan and published in Arts Professional, compare the state of the arts council at the time of the arrival of chief executive Peter Hewitt and former chairman Gerry Robinson, with that outlined in the annual report for 2003/4. While both promised the creation of a “leaner and more effective” arts council and brought in radical change to that effect - including the merging of the main organisation and the regional arts boards - the figures presented by Morgan appear to contradict that.

During that time, he states, staff salaries have increased from £15.6 million in 1997/8 to £25.9 million in 2003/4 - an increase of 66%. Hewitt’s pay has risen from £78,581 in 1998/9 - his first full year in office - to £152,000 last year. That represents an increase of 93%. In addition to this, the new regional executive directors earn between £70,000 and £93,000 compared to the £40,000 to £49,999 earned by the former chief executives of the regional arts boards. At the top end, that accounts for an 86% rise.

Staff levels have increased from 652.5 in 1997/8 to 707 last year - the largest workforce it has employed.

Morgan’s report comes weeks after ACE warned arts organisations that it had received a three-year freeze in its funds from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which represented a real terms loss of £30 million during that period. It also comes almost three years after ACE was heavily criticised by the Select Committee on Culture Media and Sport, when a previous report by Morgan demonstrated that wages had risen by 50% in the first three years of the Robinson/Hewitt leadership.

Speaking to The Stage this week, Morgan said: “Peter Hewitt has said that the arts council needs to re-establish trust with the arts community. I don’t honestly see how he can expect that to happen when they clearly haven’t been doing what they promised to do.”

The issue of trust was raised by playwright David Hare in The Stage last week when he stated that the “arts council is in deep crisis - it has completely lost the respect of the people working in the industry”.

His fears are echoed by Philip Hedley. The former chief executive of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East is calling on the funding body to freeze its staff salaries for the three years that the DCMS has frozen its government grant. He also points out that consultants’ fees have increased during the period investigated by Morgan. “If ACE joined the arts community in the hard times that are ahead then it would be a very good symbolic gesture,” he said. “Otherwise it would seem to indicate that they are looking after themselves first.”

An ACE spokesman said funding body executives wanted to meet with Morgan to discuss things further. He added that the organisation was ahead of its targets for the savings expected to be made from its restructuring.

While he admitted that equivalent salaries of the former regional arts boards directors had been increased to match those of other members of the executive board, he said the chief executive’s wage is set by review in accordance with positions in similar organisations and that the rest of the staff’s pay was subject to agreements with unions that ACE would continue to honour. However, the arts council is now considering pegging the amount of money available for salaries so that, while individuals would not be affected, the overall amount available for pay would reflect the council’s current financial position.