‘It’s about cutting the cloth’: Senior councillors agree to slash funding for The Hepworth Wakefield

The local authority will now pay £700,000 a year to help the city’s internationally renown tourist attraction.

It means the council now pays over half a million pounds less each year to the gallery than it did three years ago.

Michael Graham, the council’s cabinet member for culture, leisure and sport, told a meeting of senior colleagues: “It is about cutting the cloth.”

A report to cabinet members recommended a cut in the “service concession fee” from 2023 to 2026.

Cabinet members also agreed to continue to review the funding agreement with the Hepworth Trust.

The council’s funding of The Hepworth has previously been criticised by opposition councillors.

In November The Hepworth Trust was awarded Arts Council funding of £923,000 a year until 2026.

The Hepworth building is owned by the council but is operated under a service concession agreement with the independent trust.

The council provides an annual fee to enable the trust to manage and operate the gallery and take care of the local authority’s own fine art collection.

Coun Graham said: “It is one of the amazing assets in our district.

“It provides jobs for local people and it puts money back into the local economy.”

In 2019, the council entered into a four-year funding agreement which resulted in a gradual reduction of the annual fee, from its original £1.24m a year.

It was part of a plan to distribute funding more widely across the district and to prevent the trust’s “over reliance” on council funding.

Coun Graham explained: “Over the last few years we have reduced the concession to the Hepworth.

“It was a really difficult decision but we felt that was what was needed at the time.

“We know the financial situation across local government.

“We feel this is a way of sharing out the responsibility and it’s about cutting the cloth.”