Government to wind up Sea Change programme

The programme has been run by Cabe, which received £600,000 in administration fees for handing out just over £23 million of cash, according to the watchdog’s report and accounts.

Local authorities had to submit projects to Cabe to apply for funding because the money was being used on improving cultural infrastructure such as concert halls and arts centres.

When launched in spring 2008, Sea Change pledged £45 million for crumbling resorts.

This week a spokesman for the Department for Culture Media & Sport said: “The programme was due to finish this year but there are no plans to continue it.”

More than 30 projects have been helped out, and Cabe is due to hand out a further £14 million by the time the scheme is wound down in March.

One of the projects to have been helped by Sea Change is Studio Weave’s Longest Bench for Arun District Council, which is due to open to the public at the end of the month on the seafront at Littlehampton in West Sussex.

Studio Weave director Je Ahn admitted that without the cash the 480m-long structure, which includes shelters at either end, would not have been built. “Sea Change is a major funder of the project,” he said.

Meanwhile, Cabe will find out by next week how much the Communities & Local Government department is to cut from its budget following the imposition of savings announced by chancellor George Osborne at the beginning of last month.

It has been told to expect a cut of at least 10.5% but chief executive Richard Simmons admitted it will be more. Its CLG budget this year is £6.69 million and it already has had £138,600 cut by DCMS, its other core funder, this year.

Simmons dismissed suggestions by former chairman Stuart Lipton and founding chief executive Jon Rouse that the organisation should ditch producing reports because no one was reading them.

“The reports are widely read and change people’s thinking,” he said. “I don’t know why they said it. Perhaps they’re thinking we’re more under pressure than we are.”