News broke today that the current British government (a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition headed by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron) has decided that the United Kingdom no longer needs an official film council, as the film industry is strong enough to cope without, and as such has decided to permanently close down the UK Film Council.
The Council’s CEO, John Woodward, sent an email to his staff today explaining the situation, and telling them that the government decision (which only came through today) “has been imposed with no notice, and no consultation” and that in his opinion it “is short-sighted and potentially very damaging, especially as there is at present no roadmap setting out where the UK Film Council’s responsibilities and funding will be placed in the future.”
Funding being one of the main issues that potential British filmmakers are worried about; being as the Film Council is responsible for allocating a huge amount of funds to support home-grown movies; but the Conservatives has assured everyone that they are committed to continuing with the £15 million pounds worth of National Lottery donations that go into making British films every year, and that the current tax credit is still to be retained (for the time being).
As a result of the current government’s spending cuts the British Film Institute’s National Film Centre has already been scrapped, and the BBC is due to take a huge hit with possible license fee reductions, and a use of funds that were set aside to help with the digital switchover seeing the money go far from the industry it was supposed to support.
However it isn’t only the film and television industries that are being hit hard, as the Department For Culture, Media, and Sport is having to merge, scrap, or streamline 55 other department bodies; and as the Department’s secretary Jeremy Hunt told the Independent newspaper that nothing his department is in control of is safe from spending cuts (including the 2012 London Olympics), as it faces at least a 25% budget cut over the next four years; meaning that the £26 million that the Department doles out to fund British films every year will soon be substantially less.
Filmmakers will have to wait and see exactly how the decision affects them, and how difficult it may be to obtain funding in the future, as The UK Film Council will be completely shut down, and have its assets and operations transferred out to other departments and organizations, by April 2012; in what chairman of the Council Tim Beaven calls “a bad decision” and one that people will look back on as a “big mistake driven by short-term thinking and political expediency”, also believing that as film is “one of the UK’s more successful growth industries, it deserves better.”
