Quango review: arts bodies breathe a sigh of relief

The sighs of relief were louder than any gasps of anguish in the arts and heritage community today, even though 19 of the 55 quangos linked to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport were scrapped or reorganised. The big losers already knew their fate. The highest-profile body, the UK Film Council, was told 12 weeks ago – completely out of the blue – that it was for the chop, the same day that a more sanguine Museums, Libraries and Archives Council was informed of its demise. The question marks that remained had been over the future of heritage quangos, with speculation of an enforced merger between English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. Instead they have been retained as separate bodies but asked "as a matter or urgency" to identify and reduce overlap. Both have promised to do so, and quickly, with the government pointedly keeping open the option of a merger. Within that pot the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment was told its future was "under consideration – still considering options for reform". The quango that administers the public lending right, based in Stockton-on-Tees, is being abolished but authors who get a payment every time one of their books is borrowed from a library have been reassured that their money will be the same. The functions will be transferred to another body. The Theatres Trust will, as it already knew, become a charity. The status of the major national museums and galleries remains as it is. The biggest of them all, for example, Arts Council England, remains as expected because it is "performing a function which requires political impartiality", and it will soon be playing a key role in implementing funding cuts which emerge, as everyone knows they will, from next Wednesday's comprehensive spending review. The arts world is braced. It knows it will be cut but it is all about the size and pace of the cuts. If it really were upwards of 25%, then – as Tate's director, Nicholas Serota, wrote in the Guardian – it would mean "the greatest crisis in the arts and heritage since government funding began in 1940" .