Call for ACE chair to resign over ENO cuts

Chair of Arts Council England Sir Nicholas Serota should resign over the decision to cut funding from the English National Opera (ENO), a former Director of Productions has said.

In a letter to The Times Sir David Pountney, who was at ENO from 1982-93, described plans to withdraw ACE funding as "brutal and irresponsible".

"There is an argument for rebalancing cultural funding between London and the regions but this requires serious planning," he said.

"The fate of several hundred employees and an institution with a history of 90 years is not to be decided so arbitrarily."

Pountney added that there was no evidence the suggestions by ACE that ENO could potentially be relocated to Manchester had been seriously considered.

"There have been no discussions with Manchester’s existing cultural bodies, let alone with Opera North, which already performs in Manchester, nor any analysis of the necessary investment to create a venue in Manchester appropriate for a national opera company," he said.

"Slashing the money first and considering the resulting options afterwards is totally unprofessional. 

"Sir Nicholas Serota should not have put his name to such a procedure, whatever the pressure from the government (what happened to the 'arm’s length principle'?) and should resign."

Speaking earlier this week on the proposals Serota said that ACE was faced with "some very difficult choices" in making its funding decisions. 

"We decided that we should not spread the misery across every company in the country," he said.

"We should actually identify those companies that we thought could survive a withdrawal of their funding and on which we had faith that they had the ability to respond."