Local Government Arts Funding Tracker

Has local government arts funding been cut in your area?

The collapse of arts funding across Britain is threatening universal access to arts and entertainment. Our new research has found local government arts funding has plummeted 55% across Britain since 2010, down from £1.19 billion to just £539 million in 2024-25.

How to use our local government arts funding tracker

Use our interactive arts funding tracker below to find out how much your local authority spent on arts and culture from 2010-11 to 2024-25. The tool and analysis have been produced by the Autonomy Institute.

Search for your local authority in the search bar.
Select your local authority name in the list below the search bar. You will then see the results in the graph and table.
You can adjust the number of years you wish to look at by changing the ‘Trend Span’ in the top right corner of the tool. We recommend looking at 15 years.
The blue line on the graph represents each year of real council expenditure, while the yellow line shows the average trend which accounts for fluctuations between years.
We use the ‘Trend’ figures at the bottom of the tracker – ‘Change (trend)’ is how much in real terms local government funding has changed over the period on average, ‘% (trend)’ puts this figure into a percentage change, and ‘Annual (trend)’ tells you how much funding has changed on average each year over the period that you have selected.
Each of these figures is a way of expressing the story of local government arts funding in your area.

Put arts funding on the agenda

Contact your candidates to let them know about arts cuts in your local area. Use the tracker tool above to find relevant figures for your area and then click on the link below to find out which candidates are standing in your area. The site provides email addresses to contact candidates (note: link takes you to an external site).

*Please note, Equity is not contacting Reform candidates during this election. We advise members not to contact Reform candidates in an Equity capacity.

Click to find and email your candidates

How has local authority spending on arts and culture changed since 2010?

The Local Governments Arts Funding Tracker provides a comprehensive longitudinal analysis of spending on arts and culture across all of the local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales from the 2010-11 to 2024-25 financial years.

By aggregating official audited revenue outturn data specifically focusing on categories like museums, galleries and theatres, the dashboard offers a standardised view of cultural investment adjusted for inflation and structural changes to local government.

Methodology

The Local Governments Arts Funding Tracker visualises local authority spending on arts and culture across 317 authorities in England, 32 in Scotland, and 22 in Wales for the financial years 2010-11 to 2024-25. All figures are presented on consistent 2025 boundaries to allow for accurate longitudinal comparison.

1. Defining Expenditure

Data is sourced from official revenue outturn returns; the audited figures submitted by councils to central government. We used net expenditure figures, defined as gross expenditure minus income (admission fees, ticket sales, and grants).

2. Sector Categorisation

Each nation defines "arts and culture" differently in its official reporting. This dashboard aggregates the following categories:

England (MHCLG RO5): Archives, Arts development and support, Heritage, Museums and galleries, and Theatres and public entertainment.

Scotland (LFR 02): Museums and galleries, and Other cultural and heritage services. (2011-12 and 2015-16 are excluded due to lack of granular data).

Wales (StatsWales): Cultural and heritage services.

3. Geographic Boundaries & Data Handling

To ensure data remains comparable despite local government reorganisations in England, the following logic was applied:

Consolidations: Between 2019 and 2023, 42 predecessor authorities were merged into 11 successors (e.g., the creation of North/West Northamptonshire and Cumberland). In these cases, historical spending from the predecessors is summed and attributed to the new successor.

Split Successors: Where a county council was abolished and replaced by multiple unitaries (Cumbria, Dorset, and Northamptonshire), historical spending is apportioned by geographic area weighting. Each successor is assigned a share of the former county's spending based on its percentage of the total land area.

4. Inflation Adjustment

Expenditure values in the dashboard were adjusted for inflation, with all real-term data indexed to 2024-25 prices. These adjustments are calculated using the ONS CPI All Items index (series D7BT). The final figures are derived by averaging monthly index values across each April-to-March fiscal year.

Take action

Ahead of May’s Senedd elections, we're asking candidates to back our manifesto calling for culture in Wales to be treated as essential infrastructure.

Ahead of May’s Scottish Parliament elections, Equity is calling for Holyrood to back a pilot scheme of a Scottish Basic Income for Artists (BIA).