The chief executive of the arm’s-length council organisation that runs Glasgow’s culture and leisure services fears even greater cuts could be looming next year.

Dr Bridget McConnell, the boss of charitable trust Glasgow Life, made the comments at a discussion on the importance of culture and sport, and their contribution to society.

READ MORE: City unions take action over Glasgow Life job losses 

She told an expert panel at the Royal Society of Edinburgh event: “I was in a very depressing meeting with some very supportive people recently. For those of you who know Glasgow, the city council is probably the biggest funder of culture and sport amongst all of Scotland’s local authorities, but even that funding, which is huge, is still less than 5 per cent of the council’s total budget.

The conversation was about the settlements that may be coming next year for local government, and because of the prioritisation of social care, education, and, understandably, environmental health, there might have to be an even bigger cut in our sector.”

“I guess maybe it’s the scale of the task and perhaps we’re hoping for too much, although I think if you’re not overly ambitious you don’t get very far.”

READ MORE: Glasgow Life will see 500 jobs go amid covid crisis recovery

Pre-pandemic, the strain public services were apparent with successive governments have prioritised health, social care and education spending, which has impacted significantly on other local services, such as culture and sport. 

Between 2014 and 2017, the culture and sport sector absorbed a 7.5% reduction in funding from local government, which equated to a 4%(four per cent reduction in funding for museums, galleries and libraries, and a 9% fall in sport funding.

In 2018, Audit Scotland forecast that, by the middle of this decade, local government would be spending 80% per cent of budgets on education and social work.

Recovering from Covid-19 is going to create even more strain on the current funding model for culture and sport.

Audit Scotland has said a 4-5% four to five per cent increase will be needed in local authority expenditure in the years ahead to cover increasing demands in social care and education.

Ms McConnell said the culture and leisure sector is looking for a similar shift in the evolution and emphasis seen in pre-school education over the past 20 years.

She added: “For a long time, pre-school education was just seen as childcare and playtime and it was looking at [comparing] the investment that goes into university education as opposed to nursery education.

“Certainly, governments over the past 20 years have tried to change that; it’s still not quite there, but they have tried to change that balance and it seems to me we need that change for our sector too, otherwise we run the risk during the pandemic of a lot of what we do, especially at a local level, just bluntly going down the tubes.”

The Herald has launched A Fair Deal For Glasgow campaign, calling for the city’s venues and treasures to be funded appropriately and for both the Scottish and UK governments to come together to deliver a new funding plan for the city’s culture and leisure services.

It was prompted by figures that showed the crippling impact the pandemic has had on the council’s arms-length organisation, which runs the city’s culture and leisure. 

Glasgow Life lost £38 million in income last year. The predicted income for 2021/22 is around £6.4m.

Glasgow City Council has reached an agreement for the charitable trust to receive a guaranteed £100m a year for the next three or four years, but Glasgow Life has been able to open only 90 of its 171 venues since Covid restrictions have been eased. It says that without further funds, it cannot open any further sites.