Regional Commentary on Cultural Services in the

City of Westminster

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has tasked Government Offices and regional cultural agencies to complete Regional Commentaries on all upper tier Local Authorities. The Regional Commentaries process, carried out against a standard benchmark, is intended to: promote closer alignment of national, regional and local cultural objectives; strengthen and extend relationships between cultural agencies and local authorities; and achieve better, more effective cultural provision from a more unified approach to strategic and improvement planning. Regional Commentaries are not an inspection and are not scored for Audit Commission CPA purposes, although they may be taken into account by the Audit Commission in cultural services inspections or corporate assessments. This Commentary is the result of work between a team from Government Office London, Sport England – London, Arts Council England (ACE) London, Museums Libraries Archives (MLA) London, English Heritage and the City of Westminster between April and July 2007.

Introduction

1. The City of Westminster has a resident population of 240,000, but this figure is inflated by the daily influx of workers, visitors and tourists. Twenty eight per cent of the City’s residents are from black and minority ethnic communities with 150 languages spoken by school pupils. Westminster has areas of extreme wealth, such as Mayfair and Belgravia, alongside areas of severe deprivation; it is 39th most deprived borough in England with four wards in the top 10% most deprived.

2. Westminster has an unrivalled range of cultural services on offer to residents, businesses, and national and international visitors. It is home to national institutions such as the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, and the Institute for Contemporary Arts as well as most of the West End’s theatres and cinemas. The City has an exceptional historic environment with 11,000 listed buildings, more than double that of any other London authority, and 78% of the borough in a conservation area.

3. Westminster is rated four star and improving strongly in its Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) in 2006 - only one of ten authorities to be rated as such nationally - with cultural services rated as three-star.

4. Cultural Services are delivered through three departments with the Director of Libraries having an overall coordinating responsibility for culture. Libraries, Archives and Arts are in the Customer Services Department; Sports Development in Children and Community Services; Parks, Sport and Leisure and the Special Events Team in Environment and Leisure. Other departments that play a part in cultural service delivery are: Planning and City Development (in relation to built environment, public art and tourism); Economic Development; and Children’s Services and Adult Services. A full list of services is at Annex A. Responsibility for culture falls within the portfolios of five Cabinet Members, with the Member for Customer and Community Services taking the overall lead.

5. The budget for Cultural Services in 2007-08 is £17.3 million, which represents 7.75% of the Council’s revenue budget. The total capital budget in 2007-08 for cultural services is £5.9 million.

6. To inform the Commentary process the authority completed an exemplary self-assessment against the Regional Commentaries Benchmark in April 2007. The Commentary team commends Westminster for the time and effort involved on compiling this very comprehensive document, which clearly sets out the challenges the authority faces in delivering quality cultural services in the heart of the capital and also identifies areas for further improvement.

Achievement of objectives and improvement

Working with regional agencies

7. Westminster has a good track record of positive and effective working relationships with the DCMS regional agencies at a number of levels and has been proactive in taking forward national and regional agendas. For example the authority engaged with Sport England at an early stage to ensure that space for sports was adequately reflected in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) plans, resulting in positive understanding about promoting community use. Westminster is currently engaged with ACE London through the Creative Services programme and is the borough representative on the Arts Extend national pilot programme to look at ways in which Extended Schools can work sustainably with Arts Partners. It has also participated in programmes such as Londoners Need to Read, Get London Reading and the BBC Reading and Writing (RaW) campaign.

8. Westminster has a very effective relationship with English Heritage with day-to-day contact on listed building consent and planning matters as well as joint working on a number of significant projects that involve other key stakeholders. There is also regular contact regarding events and activities at historic sites such as the Wellington Arch and the Cenotaph. The authority owns just two of the 40 listed buildings in the City of Westminster that are on the English Heritage Buildings at Risk Register and one of these, the Marshall Street baths, is close to resolution. Westminster and English Heritage are part of the Westminster World Heritage Site Steering Group that has produced a very good management plan for the site. The plan is in the final stages of consultation.

9. The authority involves the regional agencies in its service planning through invitations to cultural sector events such as Archives Away Day, Public Art Symposium, Arts and Culture symposium (to inform Westminster’s revised Cultural Strategy), Libraries Staff conference and Active Westminster event to promote sport, physical activity and healthy eating in the borough.

10. Westminster is an active member of sub-regional and regional bodies such as Pro-Active Central (the sports partnership), the Association of Chief Librarians, Chief Leisure Officers’ Association and the Central Arts Partnership and the Western Wedge. It is working with the central London boroughs on developing a Central London 2012 creative offer and is committed to working with the Western Wedge on developing the ‘West London Story’, a cultural offer for the Western sub-region in the lead up to 2012. ACE London is particularly encouraged by Westminster’s commitment to work with neighbouring boroughs across these two sub-regions. Cross-borough working is clearly beneficial to Westminster in providing support and advice, sharing best practice, stimulating creative thinking and pooling resources to achieve more with limited resources. The sub-regional 2012 work offers a chance to explore the potential for the Cultural Olympiad to benefit Westminster residents and offer showcasing opportunities for Westminster’s creative sector. The Director of Libraries is on the Steering group for Regional Cultural Improvement and engages with MLA Council at national level e.g. on the MLA Performance Group.

Strategies and Plans

11. Westminster’s community strategy, the Westminster City Plan 2006-2016,

includes culture as a cross-cutting issue that underpins delivery against all themes. It recognises that culture is a critical component of quality of life; is central to learning and to education (particularly through the arts, media and heritage); has the potential to bring communities together; and with the creative industries is an increasingly major factor in Westminster’s economy. It also recognises that cultural activities make a huge contribution to people’s mental and physical well being and are an important way to engage people who can feel excluded, especially young people. It makes no specific mention of the museums, libraries and archives sector’s contribution in these areas, although it does cite libraries as significant in delivering focused community services.

12. The City Plan is underpinned by detailed strategies and plans, the Unitary Development Plan, a Cultural Strategy (currently being revised), a new Sports and Physical Activity Strategy (due to be published in summer 2007), and the Economic Development Strategy which identifies the library service as a provider under the objective ‘promoting employability’ – notably in the context of providing skills for life learning opportunities and screening assessments. ACE London is encouraged to see the development of a Public Art Policy as this presents a real opportunity to raise the quality and profile for public art in the borough.

13. It is understood that the new Sports and Physical Activity Strategy will further develop the need to improve sports facilities, investment, participation and equity that had already been identified in the Cultural Strategy. It is evident Westminster understands the need to develop the investment and profile of sport by moving out of traditional leisure centre provision and has sought opportunities to place sport in a different context such as healthy living (Moberly), children and young people (Crompton Street) and preventing anti-social behaviour (Positive Futures). The ability to demonstrate how sport can contribute to different social outcomes is a key strength in Westminster.

Local Area Agreement (LAA)

14. Westminster was in Round 2 of the LAAs. One of the agreement’s four themes is ‘better life chances for all our citizens’ and specifies culture as contributing to this. Westminster are using a stretch target to transform performance in school sport. They have set a challenging target of 93% of school children undertaking 2 hours PE a week compared to a starting position of 55%. Progress has been steadily improving with current levels of performance estimated at around 80-85%. This has been achieved through some innovative ideas for PE in schools where space is limited.

15. Westminster is one of two London boroughs taking part in the Feasibility Pilot for the new style LAAs. The Commentary team is encouraged by Westminster’s intention, referred to in its self-assessment, of getting a stronger political direction and embedding culture in the LAA in recognition of it being a powerful force for change and renewal.

16. Sport England believe that there needs to be a health-related sport and physical activity improvement target. While overall levels of sport and physical activity in Westminster are high, there is a real gap between the majority of affluent areas and four specific wards where deprivation is high. This has a major impact on measures of health inequality such as obesity and life expectancy. Sport England challenge Westminster to use the LAA to engage partners to work on physical activity interventions designed to impact on non-participants in these four wards.

Service improvement

17. In the 2006 CPA Westminster’s cultural block received a three-star rating, down from its previous four-star rating. This was as a result of one performance indicator (PI) - relating to school sport and included in the culture block for the first time - falling below the lower threshold (as was the case for more than 50% of London boroughs). Performance in 11 of the other 15 PIs fell into the upper threshold (including a Choice & Opportunity score of 90.95%) and four were above the lower threshold, but below the upper.

18. The Library service performs well against the majority of Public Library Service standards (meeting eight out of ten) and 88.8% % of users rated the service as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ in 2006. The library services’ visitor and book issue figures are consistently high, as compared with other London services. Westminster Libraries achieved the highest resident satisfaction level of all Council services in the 2006 City Survey, with 74% of residents satisfied or very satisfied with libraries. Other cultural services also perform well according to user surveys. Westminster Archives were categorised as ‘very good’ or ‘good’ by 96% of visitors in the 2006 Survey of Visitors to British Archives. User satisfaction with sports and leisure services at 67% was high and with parks and open spaces at 82% very high, placing both sectors within the top quartile for London.

19. Sport England’s Active People Survey shows that Westminster is performing well on the key measure of participation in sport or physical activity for 3 x 30 minutes per week (25.12%). However in line with other central London boroughs, the volunteering rate at 3.63% is very low.

20. Westminster Libraries and Archives’ art and design collections gained Designated status from MLA. The purpose built Archives centre has gained formal accreditation from the Bishop of London as the official repository for ecclesiastical records of the pre-1965 City of Westminster, from the Lord Chancellor as a repository of public records under the Public Records Act 1958 and from the Master of the Rolls as a repository for manorial and tithe documents under the Law of Property Act 1922. In addition Archives Education won an award from ‘Let's Kick Racism out of Football’ for its Football programme. All five leisure centres in the borough have ISO9001:2000 accreditation and the Sports Unit gained Investors in People (IIP) accreditation in 2006. Eighteen schools have been awarded the Artsmark. Four sites received Green Flag Awards in 2006 and applications for a further four sites have been made in 2007.

21. Suggested areas for development

·  Westminster is encouraged to engage actively with the cultural agencies as the new Cultural Strategy is developed.

·  ACE, London would welcome dialogue with Westminster on its emerging Public Art Policy.

·  Sport England believe Westminster must use the LAA and Sport and Physical Activity Strategy to target resources towards bridging the gap in sports participation within four identified wards to reduce health inequalities within the City.

·  Sport England urges Westminster to ensure that the emerging Sports Strategy will clearly state how the authority can increase participation given the lack of pitch infrastructure under their control and a low level of sports clubs infrastructure. This will involve looking at forms of non-traditional sports in non-standard settings. Sport England note that Westminster have been successful at developing such schemes such as the Parkour programme.

·  The emerging Sports & Physical Activity Strategy must consider the role of workplaces within the City and how they can engage with sports needs such as through encouraging individuals to participate through to volunteering via corporate social responsibility schemes. Sport England are willing to work with Westminster to develop these areas of work using best practice and latest research.

·  English Heritage hopes to explore the issues surrounding buildings at risk in private ownership with a number of boroughs in the near future and would like to engage Westminster in this discussion.

·  As Westminster does not support a local and community museum service, MLA London recommends that Westminster should develop a more structured policy on the preservation of artefacts of specifically local heritage interest.