This level of investment provides the arts with a platform for a new era of

“This level of investment provides the arts with a platform for a new era of growth and expansion. Our ambition is to place the arts at the heart of national life and we are planning a bold programme of investment to achieve that aim.”In broad terms, £25m will go to individual artists over the next three years compared with £4.5m in 2002-03. The regularly funded organisations, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, will see an increase from £230m in 2002-03 to about £300m and Creative Partnerships, the scheme that gives children access to artists and performers, will have a budget of at least £45m a year by 2005-06.Peter Hewitt, the council’s chief executive, described the occasion as a “real landmark” and said the reorganisation had helped to convince ministers that increased funding would be well spent. “There’s no doubt that the Government is clear that we did well financially because we got a grip .. and we made changes.”. One of Britain’s biggest accountancy firms is soliciting business from catering suppliers being investigated by the Inland Revenue for allegedly bribing celebrity chefs and restaurant managers.

According to PwC’s letter, tax inspectors discovered that payments were being made by catering suppliers to secure contracts with hotels and restaurants. The Revenue believes these payments to be illegal and not tax deductible, says the firm.According to industry sources, the Inland Revenue will visit catering suppliers if it suspects backhanders have been paid. “They will look for a ‘hole’ in the accounts, some money that has not been accounted for,” said a source. “Then they will ask what has happened to the money and might demand a tax payment or follow the trail to the recipient.”According to reports, individual restaurant managers can receive payments of more than £100,000 and the Revenue is said to have estimated that large suppliers are paying backhanders to their favoured managers and chefs worth more than £1m a year.The Inland Revenue has also begun writing to chefs and managers if they suspect them of receiving payments and not declaring them. Attempts by suppliers to disguise payments could lead to prosecution whereas any recipients would be asked to pay tax as well as possible fines.A source at PwC said: “The indications are that the Inland Revenue is taking this very seriously and is committing a lot of resources to it.”PwC’s Sue Thomas, who worked in the Revenue’s specialist compliance office until November last year, said yesterday she had written letters to about 400 catering suppliers and chefs in the London area alone. She said the investig-ation into the alleged bribing of chefs and restaurant managers had been going on for about six months.”We have decided to be pro-active about this,” she said, “and we are trying to help people understand the issues … if this is handled correctly it will be to a person’s advantage when it comes to negotiating the level of penalties.”.

The Church of England claimed yesterday that a multibillion-pound fund which clergy rely on for their pensions had performed “magnificently” despite losing £400m last year. But the Church Commissioners, in charge of overseeing the fund, said the performance compared favourably with the losses of other pension funds.Andreas Whittam Smith, a former head of the British Board of Film Classification who is now First Commissioner, said that over the past decade the fund’s value had grown by an average of 10 per cent per annum “That is a magnificent performance,” he said. “Many institutions would like to achieve that.”The church said preliminary accounting figures for 2002 showed that its fund had a smaller loss than the market average. A spokesman for the church said: “In absolute terms, it is not a reason for hanging out the bunting. All we are saying is that in the context of the current investment climate, we have not suffered as great a loss as the average.”The fund, set up in 1704 using Queen Anne’s Bounty – a windfall tax to help impoverished Protestant clergy – is used to pay the pensions of all clergy in service before 1998 and to support cathedrals, bishops and parishes in the poorest areas.