LEDBURY Poetry Festival has denied its “days are numbered” due to severe cuts to arts funding.

The annual event, which attracts thousands of visitors to the town, receives substantial ‘core’ funding from Arts Council England as a regularly funded organisation (RFO).

But a 29 per cent cut in the art council’s budget has led to fears for the future of dozens of publishers, campaign groups and events that rely on grants. A report in The Guardian newspaper named Ledbury Poetry Festival as one of three events that could “find their days numbered” due to a shake-up of the funding system.

Festival manager Victoria Patch called the fears “pure speculation”, and said: “I talked to the Arts Council and they said they knew nothing whatsoever about it.

“At the moment all the regularly-funded organisations in the entire country are putting in applications for renewed funding.

“Some organisations are going to lose their funding but we fulfil their criteria. There’s no reason why they would not fund us.”

The festival receives grants from a variety of bodies including Herefordshire Council, the Pennington Mellor Munthe Trust and the Elmley Foundation, but Arts Council England money plays a crucial part by funding core costs such as salaries. To qualify for RFO status organisations and events must fulfil a variety of criteria such as their positive impact on the community.

Mrs Patch said: “We fulfil most of them. We work with young people and different groups in the community, such as those dealing with mental health issues or adults with learning disabilities.

“We have been doing that since the festival started and it’s not a 10-day festival, it’s a year-long programme of activities.”

Arts Council England spokesman Emma Russell said RFO status had been replaced by the ‘national portfolio’ of grant-recipients and had been subjected to a 14.9 per cent cut in budget.

“Organisations can apply for anything from two years’ worth of funding. Some may no longer get funding but some may get more.”

Grant applications for this new system will be submitted by the end of January and the recipients will be announced in March.