A broadside to the response to the Baroness Hodge Review of Arts Council England from the Department for Culture Media and Sport and Arts Council England

A broadside to the response to the Baroness Hodge Review of Arts Council England from the Department for Culture Media and Sport and Arts Council England

The Arts Council’s response offers new platforms and new processes — but not the structural reform the sector desperately needs. You can’t fix a broken funding system with a better website. Without artform policies, regional balance or true arm’s‑length independence, this response simply repackages the status quo.

The Arts Council and DCMS have now published their responses to the Hodge Review – and while both documents promise “modernisation”, neither addresses the structural failures that the Review exposed. Instead, DCMS is handing the Arts Council £8 million to upgrade its systems, as if the core problem were the website rather than the architecture of the funding system itself.

This is the central flaw. The Hodge Review did not say the Arts Council needed a better portal. It said the Arts Council needed a new model. Yet ACE’s response focuses on “simpler processes”, “user‑centred design”, and a new digital platform to be rolled out from 2027. This is administrative optimisation, not structural reform.

The Review found that ACE was “too bureaucratic, and too complex to work with”. ACE’s answer is to digitise the bureaucracy. But a smoother application journey into a structurally biased system does not make that system fairer. It simply makes it more efficient at reproducing the same outcomes.

Meanwhile, DCMS frames the £8 million as an investment in “modernisation”, but avoids the deeper issue: the arm’s‑length principle has collapsed. FOI disclosures show DCMS directed the recent £80m uplift and ACE restricted eligibility for administrative convenience. No impact assessments were carried out. No rationale was documented. Yet both responses simply restate the principle rather than rebuilding it with the Arts Council stuck with a strategy – “Let’s Create” –  that is flawed, failed and finished.

The result is a pair of documents that promise new processes, new platforms, and new frameworks — but preserve the same NPO‑centric, top‑down architecture that has produced decades of imbalance. Grassroots culture remains marginal. Artform policy remains absent. Regional inequity remains unaddressed.

The sector deserves more than a better website. It deserves a funding system built for the realities of 2026, not the assumptions of 1946. The Hodge Review opened the door to structural reform. These responses repaint the door instead.

A New Deal for music and the arts remains essential because it does what neither ACE nor DCMS has yet been willing to do: rebuild the architecture, restore autonomy, and put grassroots culture at the centre of national cultural policy.

If the Hodge Review diagnosed a structural failure, the Arts Council’s response offers a cosmetic fix. The sector deserves more than a smoother application portal — it deserves a funding system built for the realities of 2026, not the assumptions of 1946. The New Deal provides that path. The New Deal will  be published shortly.

Why the ACE and DCMS Responses Fall Short

1. £8 million for a new online platform is not reform. DCMS is giving ACE £8m to overhaul its systems. This is a systems upgrade, not systems change. The Hodge Review identified structural failures — not IT failures. A better portal does not fix the absence of artform policy, the collapse of arm’s‑length independence, or the entrenched imbalance in the National Portfolio.

2. Administrative reform is being offered instead of structural reform. ACE promises “simpler processes” and “user‑centred design”. These are welcome but do not address the core issues:

• no artform policy
• no regional rebalancing
• no transparent criteria
• no correction of historic imbalances

3. Let’s Create remains in place until at least 2026–28. The Review said the strategy should be replaced. ACE will keep it for two more years. The next NPO round (2028–31) will be built on the same flawed, failed, finished foundations.

4. The arm’s‑length principle remains rhetorical, not real. FOI responses show DCMS directed the £80m uplift and ACE restricted eligibility for administrative convenience. No impact assessments were carried out. Neither response proposes structural safeguards.

5. The National Portfolio remains the centre of the system. Both documents reaffirm the NPO model. There is no commitment to artform budgets, regional quotas, independent oversight, or separating national‑interest institutions from grassroots research and development.

6. Growth ambitions are not matched by the funding model. DCMS emphasises growth, but the funding architecture still prioritises large institutions. Grassroots venues, touring circuits, and community‑embedded organisations remain marginal.

7. A New Deal for arts and music remains the only credible route to structural reform. It provides what the responses avoid:

• artform‑specific policy
• regional rebalancing
• transparent evaluation
• grassroots‑first architecture
• restored additionality
• independent governance
• a new organisational model

Bottom line: The Hodge Review diagnosed a structural failure. ACE and DCMS have responded with a digital upgrade. The New Deal will provide the structural reform the Review intended.

Chris Hodgkins
chris.hodgkins3@googlemail.com
https://chrishodgkins.co.uk/
26th March 2025