London Councils

The amount allocated to culture this year by local authorities across England is down 2.2% from last year (£8.8m), following the downward trend over the last five years that amounts to an approximate fall of £48m over the past five years.

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The Mayor of London has been given more control over London’s health budgets in a major deal with NHS, Public Health and the Secretary of State for Health.

The new Memorandum of Understanding highlights four key principles: an integrated, place-based approach; building capacity and resilience of the arts and culture sector and the creative industries; extending access to arts and culture; and strategic collaboration and advocacy. The focus is on supporting local authorities to work in more creative ways to achieve their goals.

Councillor Darren Rodwell, London Councils’ executive member for city development, said

London Councils has published a directory of names, addresses and contact numbers for councillors and officers in the 33 London borough councils.

They have also published a guide to the structure of Councils across London.

The £1.6 billion spent on culture in the capital in 2014-15 is only exceeded by Paris and Moscow. Data from the World Cities Culture Finance Report (BOP consulting) also suggests that the London is unusual in receiving most of the country’s cultural spend.

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The Mayor of London is calling on the government to specify how more than £600m received from the European Union for delivering economic growth across the capital will be replaced in the aftermath of Brexit.

The Mayor chairs the London Economic Action Partnership (LEAP), which oversees the investment of £600m from the European Structural and Investment Funds into skills, employment and enterprise initiatives across the capital.

London Councils, the body which represents all of London’s boroughs, has issued a call to Government asking for greater emphasis on prevention and increased investment in social care.

The policy document details the areas where integration between health and social care is coming under pressure and makes a series of recommendations for improvements in integration.

Analysis by the King’s Fund has revealed that local authorities are planning average cuts to their public health budgets of around 9% next year. This is alongside planned cuts to culture budgets of 6%.

The research by the King’s Fund’s David Buck is on data released by the Department for Communities and Local Government and combines the planned budgets of all local authorities in England. The cuts are the result of the Government’s Budget announcement earlier this year of an overall cut in public health spending. Buck describes the cuts as a “false economy”.

A new report has revealed a £236m or 17% decline in local authority cultural spending since 2010. London boroughs saw the largest cuts in arts and culture spending; 19 per cent between 2010 and 2015.