Budget hits museum funds with 13m cut…

Designers working regularly for museums will be badly hit by cuts announced in last week’s Budget, which included a loss of 13m for museums next year. The 226m allocated to museums for 1995/6 will drop to 213m for 1996/7 – a 3 per cent cut across the board.

“The Department of National Heritage has behaved disgracefully to museums and to designers,” says Museums Association assistant director Maurice Davies.

“There’ll be fewer smaller projects going on, which are the bread and butter of design consultancies working regularly for museums. The Lottery jobs don’t compensate, they’re insecure and unpredictable,” he adds.

But the DNH argues that Lottery cash will compensate Britain’s museums. “This sector received 250m in the first year of the Lottery, this won’t exactly replace the money lost through Budget cuts but they are receiving lots of cash,” says a DNH spokesman.

The Victoria & Albert Museum will lose 1m in grant aid for the next financial year, according to a spokesman, while the Imperial War Museum and the Natural History Museum’s budgets will both be significantly reduced.