The Public Campaign for the Arts has published a new analysis of government data which found that local authority expenditure on all cultural services has halved across England since 2009-10.

Jack Gamble, director of the Public Campaign for the Arts, said: “The arts are not a luxury – they provide vital benefits to our lives and communities. We appreciate the financial pressures that local councils are under, partly due to cuts from national government since 2010, but sacrificing our cultural services is not the answer. We have to find a way to keep funding them alongside other services – it shouldn’t be an either/or.”