Chancellor George Osborne has announced the government's four-year Spending Review to Parliament, revealing some of the deepest cuts in public spending in decades.
Posted: 10/03/2022
Source: BBC News.
Follow link below to see the key points for all government departments.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11569160
The key announcements:
About 490,000 public sector jobs likely to be lost
Average 19% four-year cut in departmental budgets
Structural deficit to be eliminated by 2015
£7bn in additional welfare budget cuts
Police funding cut by 4% a year
Retirement age to rise from 65 to 66 by 2020
English schools budget protected; £2bn extra for social care
NHS budget in England to rise every year until 2015
Regulated rail fares to rise 3% above inflation
Bank levy to be made permanent
Communities and Local Government
Annual budget: £33.6bn
What’s being cut: Councils will see a 7.1% annual fall in their budgets. But ring-fencing of local authority revenue grants will end. Funding for Redefinition of social housing, changed terms for new rental agreements. Aim to build 150,000 new affordable homes over next four years.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Annual budget: £2bn
What’s being cut: Budget cut 24% over four years. Administration costs to be cut 41% while core arts programmes will see a 15% fall in funding. Free museum entry to remain in place. BBC licence fee to be frozen for next six years. Corporation will also fund World Service and BBC Monitoring. Adds up to equivalent of 16% savings over the period.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) settlement includes:
provision for a safe and successful Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, by maintaining a public sector funding package of £9.3 billion;
investing £530 million over the Spending Review period including £300 million from the TV licence fee, to improve the UKs broadband network;
maintaining free entry to museums and galleries;
capital project funding for the Tate Modern, the British Museum, and the British Library Newspaper Archive in Boston Spa;
ensuring national cultural assets are preserved for future generations including by limiting cuts to 15 per cent for core programmes like Museums, Arts Council England funding to frontline arts and Sport Englands Whole sport plans; and
overall resource savings of 24 per cent in real terms over the Spending Review period (excluding Olympics) through slimming down the Department and its Arms Length Bodies, and focusing on key priorities.
What the Government says about arts and culture:
While culture, media and sports will take their share of overall reductions to public spending, the Government is committed to supporting excellence and improving the quality of life for all through these sectors by:
encouraging corporate investment to bring in new sources of funding and philanthropicgiving, particularly in the arts;
providing greater freedom and flexibilities for museums through easier access to reserves of privately raised funds, and taking a more strategic approach to public funding for the arts; and
continuing to reform Lottery funding to ensure more money goes to support projects in the arts, sport and heritage, by allocating 60 per cent of Lottery funding to these causes and 40 per cent to the voluntary and community sector.
This is taken from the 2010 spending review produced by the Coalition Government.
The full document can be found at:
