ACE Lottery will be contributing a total of £112.5 million towards the costs of the 2012 London Olympics, spread over the four years leading up to the Games. That amounts to £28 million per year, i.e. 5 per cent. of the expected total income for the arts in the period 2008-09 to 2011-12. There will still be approximately £500 million of new Lottery money for ACE over those four years and existing Lottery commitments will not be affected.
The Government have a proud record of support for the arts and over the last 10 years we have increased funding to the arts by 73 per cent. in real terms. In October 2007, we announced that grant-in-aid funding for Arts Council England (ACE) would continue to rise above inflation to £467 million by 2010-11, i.e. an increase of 3.3 per cent. above inflation over three years.