Can Arts Council England Handle Devolution?

The UK’s prospective prime minister, Andy Burnham, has vision for a more devolved Britain.

It's a prospect that would have horrified Sir Humphrey Appleby. In ‘Power to the People, a 1988 episode of the sitcom, Yes, Prime Minister, the chief civil servant discusses the prospect of devolution with his junior colleague, Bernard Woolley.

He warns, with horror, that regional government would put the ‘important things of life’ – ‘the opera, Radio 3, the countryside” – into the hands of ‘politicians, councillors and ordinary voters’, without the controlling influence of Whitehall mandarins to protect them from ‘the barbarians’.

It was satire, but it captured something enduring about the British establishment – an assumption that the arts are best governed from the centre.

If Burnham’s broader devolution agenda is applied to arts and culture, that assumption could be tested like never before. The former mayor of Greater Manchester has made devolution central to his political philosophy, but what would that mean in practice for the country’s arts funding architecture – and, in particular, for Arts Council England (ACE)?

For Alison Cole, director of the Cultural Policy Unit (CPU), a think tank with roots in the Fabian Society and close engagement with Labour Party thinking, the result would be a profound, but not destructive, shift. “One of the most significant shifts a future Burnham government would make would be a move away from a predominantly national, centrally-administered model of cultural funding towards one where more strategic decisions are made at city-regional level,” she says.

Cole argues that cultural policy is already deeply entangled with local priorities – regeneration, tourism, transport, education and economic development – and that this makes devolution a logical next step. The CPU has proposed a city tourism charge, estimating that even a modest overnight accommodation levy could raise £428 million annually for culture across England, with a bolder rate yielding over £1.2 billion.  “That does not mean a wholesale transfer of responsibility,” she says. “National institutions and programmes would remain essential, but a greater share of funding could be devolved within a clear national framework.”

Under such a model, ACE would not disappear but change. Cole suggests it could become a more strategic national body, “setting standards, evaluating outcomes, investing in projects of genuinely national significance, and ensuring equitable access across England”, while decisions about festivals, museums, libraries and local infrastructure are taken closer to communities.

But not everyone sees that transition as straightforward. David Wright, director of Research and Impact at the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures at the University of Warwick, says ACE is already facing a moment of uncertainty.

“ACE is clearly in a bit of flux post Hodge,” he says, referring to the independent review of the body published earlier this year. “The nods in that [report] to the revival of more local and regional forms of oversight has already arguably moved in a more ‘devolved’ direction. If that continues, it strikes me as a reasonable question to ask what a national body provides in addition to that, beyond lobbying or strategic agenda and direction setting.”

It is a potentially existential challenge. If regional governance expands, local authorities write cultural strategies and city-regions increasingly shape investment, Arts Council England risks being left with an awkward question at its centre: if power is genuinely devolved, what is it actually for?

Wright points to Scotland and Wales as examples of how devolution can open up different cultural conversations. He highlights the Welsh government setting out the goal of people having a ‘right to culture’, while in Scotland, the Scottish National Party has explored basic income for artists. Yet he also warns against easy assumptions that moving money out of London would solve longstanding inequalities. “It is important though to recognise that ‘national’ London-based institutions are valuable and important in the UK’s cultural ecosystem and deserve investment. It can’t be a zero-sum game.”

When approached for comment, ACE didn’t offer anything specific on Burnham’s devolution agenda, but highlighted its commitment, following the Hodge review to ‘giving citizens the power to shape what happens in their communities’, endorsing the idea that local authorities should produce cultural strategies.

Few people are better placed to read Burnham’s instincts than John McGrath, artistic director and chief executive of Factory International, the organisation behind Aviva Studios and the Manchester International Festival – perhaps the defining cultural project of Burnham’s mayoralty. From his perspective, the direction of travel is already clear. “Andy’s approach has been to ensure that decisions are made close to the points of delivery, so that policy reflects real need and successes can be built upon,” he says. “However, he is very clear on the need to avoid political interference in arts and culture.”

McGrath continues: “My understanding is that Andy strongly favours the arm’s-length principle. As the Arts Council is the main structural mechanism for ensuring arms-length separation between arts funding and politicians, I expect it to stay in place as the key conduit for funding.”

That suggests a Burnham government would be more likely to reshape ACE rather than abolish it. But McGrath also believes regional priorities would become far more influential. “I expect that regional arts strategies will have greater impact on decision making. [The Department of Culture, Media & Sport]  and ACE will still need to steer national strategy, but this will, I imagine, be expected to be responsive to regional differences, and to recognise regional successes.”

Still, devolution carries risks. Wright notes that, “there is already a postcode lottery” in cultural access, often shaped by transport and urban proximity, but warns that local cultural budgets have historically been easier to cut than national ones. And not every region has Greater Manchester’s institutional heft – or a mayor as culturally engaged as Burnham. That may be the real test of Burnhamism in power: not whether culture can be devolved, but whether the structures beneath it – multi-year funding, equalisation mechanisms and local revenue streams – are strong enough to make devolution meaningful rather than uneven.

Sir Humphrey feared that regional government would allow ‘ordinary voters’ too much say over the arts, whereas Burnham’s wager appears to be that culture may be stronger when it belongs more fully to the places and people it serves. The question is whether England’s institutions are ready for that shift.