After Thoughts by Jane Taylor

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Reading reports from the national audit office is, I am confident, a minority sport. I usually start off feeling slightly resentful but generally discover some useful and thought-provoking content worth the effort. This month’s publication, reported on p1 and p3, looks at some of the giant lottery-funded capital schemes, begun in the early years under the aegis of the Arts Council of England. Something about this report is irking me, despite my best efforts to see the other point of view, and even though I know I have the luxury of 20/20 hindsight. My irritation is not exactly with the NAO, or the Arts Council, but with a more pervasive, very British (English?) attitude to achievement, especially in the public sector. It boils down to a personal belief that we have still not thrown off our 19th-century culture of happy amateurism.

The lottery was set up precisely to do big things, capital projects. The first phase was about buildings more than anything else. Large public buildings are (statement of the stunningly obvious) by definition big and complex projects to manage. This would have been obvious in 1995, too. To avoid very expensive mistakes, therefore, it stands to reason that you load the odds in your favour to start with, by ensuring you have the necessary expertise, learning, management disciplines, etc, on board. Don’t you?

Apparently not. Apparently, the NAO believes, funders – as well as beneficiaries – have to go through a steep and expensive learning curve. Call me naïve, but I can’t quite see why. Nor can I see why, just because a capital project is big and complex, the NAO describes it as risky. It is only risky if those in charge of it are not experts in delivering big and complex things.

One reason why this bothers me is because we haven’t seen the last of lottery-sponsored grands projets. The Culture Secretary is hugely keen to see lottery funds used to develop more big ideas, some of which will involve big structural projects. She also remains strongly committed to the lottery as a promoter of innovation. In combination, these two concepts are combustible: this is where real risk is involved: exceptional projects in which even the best technical expertise and the most creative minds and the most ruthless planners cannot be sure that they can pull it off – but if they do the results will be magnificent, ground-breaking and enduring. And if they don’t, I hope and believe I would defend their failure and the lost millions. The best of the lottery’s grands projets have already given us some wonderful examples of risk managed successfully. Yet surely we need to be able to distinguish between the merely big and complex and the truly high-risk. And with the former category we should expect and demand the highest standards and value for money. 

No Nigel for now
The gossip over the past couple of months has been that the DCMS’s favourite troubleshooter, Nigel Pittman, was about to be drafted in to work on merging NOF and CF. Pittman was lent to the CF as caretaker chief executive until Richard Buxton took over in 2001. He was then lent to ACE to head up London Arts during the transition period to a single organisation. Pittman’s return to the DCMS seemed perfectly timed for him to begin the background work on merger. But it seems Nigel has been diverted to a more urgent hotspot: he’s off to Iraq to help them rebuild their museums and galleries. Who said life in the civil service was dull?