Features
Does UK arts funding reach the regions? Arts Council England and the levelling up agenda
Arts Council England levelling up: how NPO data by region moves public arts money, with named examples and the limits of the published figures.
What to take away
- Greater London still receives roughly a third of National Portfolio money, so the levelling up claim holds only in part.
- The 2023 to 2026 round moved cash and organisations out of the capital, and the North West was the clearest winner.
- Judge the shift against regional gross value added, because London's funding share runs well above its share of the economy.
- Arts Council England publishes organisation level figures, not regional totals, so every regional number is one you build yourself.
- The 2026 to 2029 portfolio has been announced name by name, and no comparable regional summary has been published.
What the National Portfolio pays for
Arts Council England is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It distributes grant in aid and National Lottery money across England only. Its remit and status are set out on the Arts Council England page on GOV.UK.
The National Portfolio is the core of that spending. Each round names organisations that receive regular annual funding for a fixed period. The 2023 to 2026 round ran at about £446 million a year across roughly 990 organisations.
Project grants, Capital Investment and National Lottery Project Grants sit around the portfolio. They are short term and competitive. Portfolio status is what an organisation builds a decade of work on, which is why entry and exit matter more than one year of grant.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own councils. Our guide to how UK arts councils fund the arts compares the four systems and their remits.
How the regional split is made
Allocation runs in three layers. Arts Council England sets a national budget and investment principles. Regional teams assess applications against those principles. The national council approves the final list.
How NPO money is allocated
- National budget and investment principles set
- Regional teams assess applications
- National council approves final list
- Regional teams shape the outcome
There is no per-head formula and no published need target. That absence matters. Every regional shift is a decision somebody made, not a mechanical result.
The regional totals are not published as a clean table, so you build them from the portfolio list:
- Download the portfolio spreadsheet and open the annual funding column.
- Sort by region using the region field, not the postcode.
- Sum the annual awards for each region and count the organisations.
- Repeat for the previous round, then compare cash totals and organisation counts side by side.
Those two numbers often move in opposite directions. A region can gain organisations while losing money, or the reverse. Before you publish the total, our arts reporting prepublication checklist covers the arithmetic and the sourcing that regional figures need.
Funding shares beside regional GVA
A funding total alone says little. £150 million in London and £20 million in the North East land in economies of very different size. The Office for National Statistics measures them, and its regional accounts are the starting point.
Gross value added is the measure to use, and the ONS explains the concept in its GVA guidance. Put the two sets of shares side by side and the funding question becomes answerable.
Bands below are rounded typical figures for scale, not exact lines lifted from one document.
| Region | NPO money a year, typical band | Share of portfolio | Approximate GVA | GVA share of UK |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greater London | £140m to £160m | about a third | about £500bn | about 24% |
| North West England | £50m to £70m | low teens | about £190bn | about 9% |
| West Midlands | £35m to £50m | high single figures | about £150bn | about 7% |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | £30m to £45m | mid single figures | about £150bn | about 7% |
| North East | £15m to £25m | low single figures | about £60bn | about 3% |
London is the number most regional stories are really about. Its portfolio share sits near a third against an economic share nearer a quarter.
Two limits apply. Arts GVA is bundled with the wider creative industries, so it is not a pure arts measure. Regional accounts also lag the funding data by more than a year.
Named shifts in the 2023 to 2026 round
English National Opera is the clearest named exit. It lost its portfolio place in the 2023 to 2026 round and received £11.4 million in transition funding over three years, tied to a move out of London to Greater Manchester.
Regional portfolio shifts 2023-26
North West
- Direction
- Gained
- Cities
- Manchester, Salford, Liverpool
- Rural
- Held ground
West Midlands
- Direction
- Gained
- Cities
- Birmingham, Coventry
- Rural
- Added organisations
Yorkshire and the Humber
- Direction
- Mixed
- Cities
- Leeds, Sheffield
- Rural
- Smaller organisations lost out
North West England gained most. Manchester, Salford and Liverpool venues held or improved their positions, and the region's total rose. For how that plays out on the ground, our critic's guide to North West England and Yorkshire covers the venues and the funders.
Yorkshire and the Humber was mixed. Leeds Playhouse and Sheffield Theatres held portfolio status, while smaller rural organisations were likelier to leave. City gains and rural losses repeat across the country, and the rural half is under-reported.
The Glasshouse in Gateshead and Baltic stayed in, which keeps the North East's large venues on regular funding. The region's smaller organisations lean harder on project grants.
Place-based schemes and what they prove
The government runs smaller cultural programmes alongside the portfolio. UK Town of Culture gives one town a year of programming and a modest budget. The permanent mobile museum takes objects to places with no national museum nearby.
Both are real, and both matter to the towns involved. Neither runs at portfolio scale. A Town of Culture year is counted in hundreds of thousands of pounds, while the portfolio is counted in hundreds of millions.
Treat these schemes as signals of intent and as local stories. They are not evidence that the funding map has changed.
If you meet the same distortions in institutional claims, our piece on recurring arts coverage problems sets out how to handle them.
