The hopelessly discredited funding body announced a major U-turn today.
After years of complaint that it was making arts orgs spend more time on filling forms than making art, it has eased the rules for minnows.
This is the climbdown sent round today – far too little, and much too late:
Making things simpler for our National Portfolio Organisations
I am pleased to tell you about some improvements we will be making to simplify processes for your organisation, and every member of our National Portfolio.
We have heard clearly from you that you want us to make our processes simpler for you, and to make the ways we work together more efficient. We’re doing this to enable you to focus more on the creative work you do – and less on having to manage the paperwork related to your grant.
Below are some of the headline improvements we have planned. We are keen to get feedback, and to test our work with NPOs before rolling them out to everyone from April 2026.
What we are improving:
Flexible and light-touch reporting requirements for NPOs and IPSOs: We’re developing solutions to make it easier for you to tell us what you will do with our investment, including a revised, more time-saving approach to the paperwork we ask for.
Significantly reduced monitoring for organisations receiving £400,000 or less per annum: Reducing administrative burden is particularly important for smaller organisations, and we’ll reduce monitoring requirements for those receiving £400,000 or less per annum.
Improving our working relationship: We want you to get the support you need from our staff when you need it. We will work with NPOs to understand how we can improve how we work with you, better reflecting your needs.
pictured: chairman Nick Serota
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