Yesterday (26 March 2026) the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Arts Council England (ACE) published their response to Baroness Hodge’s independent review of ACE.
The Hodge review (published in December 2025) proposed wide-ranging reform to Arts Council England, much of which WGGB welcomed (you can read our response in here). WGGB also gave expert evidence to the Hodge review and responded to a Government consultation on ACE earlier last year.
In response to yesterday’s announcements from DCMS and ACE, WGGB General Secretary Ellie Peers said:
“We welcome the Government’s pledge to accept all of Baroness Hodge’s recommendations, and particularly the commitment that Arts Council England should be an independent, arm’s length body, free from political interference and an impartial champion of freedom of expression.
“At a time when there is increasing evidence and acknowledgement that new writing is under threat, we welcome the plan to introduce a new Individuals Service and National Programme for Individuals but are disappointed that no additional funds appear to have been allocated for this. We look forward to working with ACE to make sure this new provision is more than a re-worked version of Developing Your Creative Practice and works to genuinely grant more access to the profession for individual writer/creators.
“NPOs play a key role in supporting creative freelancers but more can be done to make that work more accessible, inclusive and visible and we look forward to continuing our discussions with theatre management bodies to see how we can support this.
“Commitments to equality and diversity and broadening access to the arts are always to be applauded, but this must translate to meaningful change.
“While it’s only right that the arts should reflect the interests and concerns of our communities, we also need to ensure that citizen- and community-led models also include a wide range of creator voices to ensure that excellence and inclusivity are distributed across all our regions.
“ACE is currently much too bureaucratic, and too complex to work with. We hear this regularly from our members, particularly in the light of last year’s collapse of their online application portal which I wrote to ACE CEO Darren Henley about. The slimming down of application processes and the improvement of software systems are therefore both very welcome.
“Arts funding has been facing unprecedented challenges for too many years now, and talk of injecting philanthropy and the introduction of a trading arm into ACE’s work raises central questions about the role of Government in funding of the arts and how alternative sources of funding might conflict with the arm’s-length principle and artistic freedom.
“While it is good to see a timetable for reforms set out, we note that the new service for indivduals may not launch until 2028 and the roll-out of the new ACE systems will not begin until next year – in the current climate this is a long time for freelance creators to wait.
“We look forward to engaging with ACE on its upcoming reforms, and will continue to represent the interests and concerns of our writer members at all times and stages of this work.”