THE announcement of more than £100m of Arts Council funding is welcome news, coming on the back of Newcastle and Gateshead last year winning the right to hold a £5m Great Exhibition of the North in the summer of 2018.

Events such as Durham’s brilliant Lumiere and the spectacular Stockton International Riverside Festival are vital for the region’s economy, and our growing reputation as a cultural destination of national – and international – significance.

Confirmation that projects including Darlington’s Theatre Hullabaloo will receive a guaranteed income until 2022 due to changes in the way funding is allocated provides some much needed financial security for the groups involved.

However, yesterday’s announcement should not be allowed to paper over the cracks left by years of Government austerity.

Crippling cuts to council budgets imposed from Whitehall have left many authorities struggling to fund their statutory duties, with hundreds of jobs lost and services stretched to breaking point. Community theatres and cultural outreach projects for some of the most isolated in society have fallen by the wayside.

Newcastle City Council has axed huge parts of its arts budget, while Darlington Borough Council closed the town’s Arts Centre five years ago and is about to move Crown Street Library into the Dolphin Centre to save money.

So yes, it’s positive that a sum totalling more than £100m is coming to the region over a four year period, and good news that nationally, the Arts Council has allocated £170m extra to projects outside London. But it should be put in the wider context of the cutbacks which have done so much damage to the region’s cultural landscape in recent years.