Arts and other groups facing grants cuts in Worcester

Worcester City Council's Policy and Resources Committee is set to discuss the measures

Worcester City Council plans to cut some grants for arts organisations and other groups as it tries to balance its books.

The authority is struggling to balance its budget and expects the gap in its finances to grow to £4m in the next four years.

To help compensate, it is seeking to cut £60,000 from the small grants pool in the next two years and a further £113,000 by the end of 2028.

Councillors backed the move at a meeting.

The plan will not affect large grants for organisations such as Citizens Advice, nor the Worcester Community Trust and the Lyppard Hub groups that run community centres.

But the council will reduce the pot from which small grants of up to £5,000 are drawn. The same pool also provides "one-off" grants that must be used within a year and often go to arts, culture and sports organisations.

Councillors said some of these grants had been funded by tapping into reserves and the situation could not continue.

Under the council's current small grants system, organisations can bid for funding from a pot totalling £63,000. A separate sum of £3,500 goes to Worcester Arts Council to distribute to other groups.

"The city council is no longer in a place where we can support everything that we want," Lynn Denham, a Labour councillor and joint leader of the city council, said at the 25 July meeting.

"And I think particularly that grants are being funded from reserves is not a financially stable position."