Agenda and minutes

The Chair welcomed Members to the Board meeting.

Apologies for absence were received from Cllrs Terry O’Neill, Alyson Barnes, David Phillips and Greg Smith. Councillor Colin Organ substituted for Cllr Smith and Councillor Jane Edbrooke substituted for one of the Labour members.

The Chair accorded thanks to Doreen Stephenson who stood down at the local elections and was very involved in the Board’s work, in particular speaking at the Culture Leadership Essentials Programme. He also accorded thanks to Apu Bagchi who was an Independent substitute Member.

The Chair accorded congratulations to Cllr Peter Golds who was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.  He also thanked Iain Varah whose tenure as Chair of CLOA ends this week and the Chair looked forward to welcoming and working with Mark Allman, the new Chair. Mark is the Head of Sports and Active Lifestyle at Leeds City Council.

The minutes of the meeting held on 3 March 2015 were agreed as an accurate record.

Laura Dyer, Executive Director, Arts Council England will attend.

The Board welcomed Laura Dyer (Executive Director, Arts Council England) and Paul Bristow (Arts Council England) to the meeting and it was excellent to have a very positive working partnership between the Board and Arts Council England.

Post-general election and ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review, it was now a good opportunity to take stock of where we are on arts funding, the challenges and opportunities for further collaboration. Our joint lobbying on the arts and growth ahead of the 2013 Spending Review resulted in a better than expected outcome for the arts (5% cut) compared to the DCMS cut of 5%.

The Board were keen to explore the opportunities for the arts that might arise from devolution and consider what this might mean for how the ACE works with councils, support the arts to be bigger players in commissioning conversations and strengthen our narrative on how the arts can help to tackle costly health and social pressures and continue to support councils to share and adopt new delivery models through the joint Cultural Leadership Essentials Programme.

There was a continuing need to promote the culture and arts agenda including work with local authorities had been very positive and an excellent partnership had developed.

Arts and Culture needed to be embedded across all agendas and there was a case to be made that it contributed to increased wellbeing which was linked to the public health agenda. A key issue was how the sector could remain strong and resilient in a period of severe budgetary constraint.

With specific reference to the Leadership Essentials Programme work with the LGA, this had been beneficial and it was important to maximise the benefits of staying in touch with Councillors who were attending the programme, so they were able to develop further.

Arts Council England was keen to work on a joint approach on the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). The Chair and Chief Executive of ACE had been vociferous in expressing their concerns about the challenge of the cultural base being badly eroded by spending cuts. In addition, ACE was keen to share research with the LGA and in particular data on rural communities.

Councillor Edbrooke had sight of a useful libraries report which she would share with ACE.

ACE would be revisiting their strategic statement document.

Board members made the following points in the discussion that followed:

Councils were fighting for their survival with the severe budgetary pressures and it was inevitable that this would affect the arts as Councils would be forced to spend monies on priority areas such as adult social care.

The partnership working with local authorities and ACE was greatly valued, particularly in relation to the Leadership programme.

We should spend money as wisely as possible and focus on outcomes. Local authorities were more than capable of rising to the challenges ahead in an era of reduced funding.

Many local museums received no help from the Arts Council England (although ACE stated that they did their best to spread funding  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.

The new Government had set out its legislative programme for the next five years in the Queens Speech on 27 May 2015 and published major Bills including the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill. There would be an Emergency Budget on 8 July 2015 with an expected Spending Review in the autumn 2015. The report to the Board summarised the wider political and financial context for culture, tourism and sport and suggested areas of focus for the coming weeks and 2015/16.

The Chair advised the Board that he had written to Ed Vaizey MP and Tracey Crouch MP at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and would be meeting Tracey Crouch on 7 July. In addition, he would be meeting the Secretary of State, Rt. Hon John Whittingdale shortly.  He looked forward to a sustainable relationship with Ministers. Cross-cutting work with other LGA boards was important to progress particularly in relation to the LGA’s DevoNext campaign and to develop a clear position on the opportunities for the Culture, Tourism and Sport sector and a vision of a new relationship between councils and the DCMS agencies.

It was advised in the report that paragraph 7 (the financial context) should state “£4.5 million” of in-year cuts to departmental budgets across Whitehall, instead of “ £4.5 billion.”

Board members felt that the Tourism should be at the forefront of the Government’s agenda. This was a central part of the Scottish Government’s work and this needed to be reflected in England.

Devolution deals would develop quickly in the next few weeks and months and Culture and Tourism needed to be considered as part of the devolution deals.

The Chair requested that Board members should be able to put forward comments between Board meetings to Laura Caton and the Member Services Officer.

Decision

The Board agreed the priority areas for 2015/16 as contained in the report.

Action

Over 150 delegates had attended the LGA’s annual Culture, Tourism and Sport Conference in Durham on 3 and 4 March 2015, organised in part by the Chief Cultural and Leisure Officers’ Association. The report to the Board summarised the delegate feedback and updated Members on plans for the 2016 Conference. Thanks were again accorded to Cllr Henig and Durham County Council for their excellent organisation of the 2015 conference. It was noted that evaluation had shown a very high level of delegate satisfaction with the conference in all respects.

Leicester as a venue for the 2016 Conference was welcomed and it was hoped that there would be an opportunity for delegates to visit areas of interest in the locality, including the Richard III visitor centre and the Curve theatre. In addition, Leicester would be the Rugby World Cup host city. It was noted that Leicester and Leicestershire had a rich heritage. Cllr Pain offered to work with officers in his capacity as Leader of Harborough District Council and as a member of Leicestershire County Council to draw up a programme of potential visits in Leicestershire for conference delegates whilst they are staying in Leicester for the 2016 annual conference.

Decision

Members noted the Conference evaluation;

Members noted that the 2016 Conference will be in Leicester on 24-26 February inclusive; and

Noted that officers were exploring Hull as a venue for 2017.

Action

Cllr Blake Pain would discuss with officers about the 2016 Conference and the possibility of Conference delegates having a programme of events to explore and visit Leicestershire during 24-26 February.

Members noted the Annual Review of activities during 2014/15, which would be submitted to the LGA Exceutive. This included an overview of headline achievements and various initiatives from the Board in a number of areas.

It was considered very important that Board members reported back on Outside Body meetings attended.

It was also noted that the Labour members of the Board met up on a regional basis to discuss matters outside of meetings and this was considered useful for other Party Groups as a communication tool.

Decision

The Board noted the annual review of activities.

Action

The Board requested that Party Groups explored ways of interacting with each other a region-by-region basis outside of the main meetings along the lines that are currently in place within the Labour Group.

The Board received an oral update on the work of the Libraries Task Force.  This was making good progress against the four priorities agreed with the Minister, namely digital, best practice, workforce and links to wider agendas such as growth and health. Joint accountability ensured that the Taskforce is firmly sector led.

The Board’s Lead Members had a very useful update meeting with the Chair of the Task Force, Paul Blantern and Chief Executive, Kathy Settle on 19 May ahead of this Board meeting.

It was anticipated that the Minister Ed Vaizey MP would be soon formally reviewing the Task Force’s early progress and a further update would be circulated to the Board ahead of the next meeting in September 2015.

Decision

The Board noted the oral update.

Action

The Board would receive updates on the progress of the Task Force which would include an update prior to the next Board meeting in September 2015.

The Board would receive a timeframe and work programme for the Libraries Task Force.

Members discussed the proposed activity to make the case for greater involvement in Premier League community foundations and discussed the next steps.

The Board were concerned to ensure that the Premier League needed to support individual football clubs and felt that very large amounts of money were being spent on TV deals at a time when local authorities were to reducing expenditure across all its services. They also felt that monies should be redistributed to provide local opportunities for up and coming footballers at local level.

In the Board discussion that followed, Members made the following comments:

There were not enough people volunteering to be football coaches owing to the often cumbersome nature of the DBS checks and delays in processing of these checks.

The cost of the Premier League was the same as the budgetary cuts to welfare.

There were often barriers for parents being able to put forward their children to play football e.g. in buying designer kits which are often very expensive.

Grassroots football has a severe lack of funding at local level and the Premier League needed to play its part in helping to make grassroots football accessible for people.

There should be an encouragement for more people to participate in all kinds of sports on health grounds.

Decision

The Board noted the report.

Action

I was trying to make sense of this action which I noted said “work around other business”-not sure here.

The report updated Members on current issues of interest to the Board not covered elsewhere on the agenda. Updates were included in relation to:

·         CTS Improvement Programme

·         Physical activity and health

·         Tourism and the visitor economy (including Magna Carta)

·         Archives and heritage

·         Culture and the arts

·         Digital inclusion

There had been an “Active People Survey” as part of the physical activity and health agenda and it was requested that this survey should be e-mailed to Board members. In addition, the Sports Minister Tracey Crouch MP announced that she will be working with the sports sector to develop a new strategy as a matter of urgency with the intention of a more joined up approach to sport across Whitehall. The Chair would be meeting the Minister on 7 July and this would be an area for discussion.

Board Members were keen to promote cycling to a greater degree than at the present time.

Decision

Members noted the report.

Actions

A copy of the “Active People Survey” to be e-mailed to Board members.

The Chair would be discussing the new sports sector strategy with the Sports Minister, Tracey Crouch MP on 7 July.

The Chair introduced the report, which updated Members on meetings of the CTS Outside Bodies and other Member meetings since the last Board meeting in March 2015 and looked ahead to future member meetings.

Decision

Members noted the report.

The report provided some case studies of activities being undertaken by Councils to highlight the role of culture and arts in improving health and wellbeing. This referred to case studies from Derbyshire, Blackpool and Worcestershire. Councils were able to access these case studies on the LGA website.

Decision

Members noted the report.

The Board requested that consideration should be given for future meetings of the Board taking place at venues outside the LGA where possible.

Action

Officers to investigate the possibility of future Board meetings taking place at venues outside of the LGA and across the country.