Catalogue description Tate Gallery: Finance: Papers

The Finance Department is responsible for the Gallery's financial management, Government Accounts, Trust Funds, Friends and some other accounts of supporting organisations. The department produces the Gallery's audited accounts, financial statements and forecasts for senior management, the Director and the Trustees. The accounts of the Gallery are audited by the National Audit Office.

Most of the cost of running the Tate is met from public funds voted annually by Parliament. Each year a Forward Plan is produced which details the projected use of the funds for the coming financial year and the three following years. On the basis of this plan Government makes an offer of Grant-in-Aid to the Board of Trustees following the November budget. A revised plan is then prepared, endorsed by the Trustees and presented to Government. From 1997-8 this revised plan has taken the form of a Funding Agreement between the DCMS and the Trustees, whereby the Board of Trustees will set out formally a small number of high level key objectives to be pursued in relation to the receipt of Grant-in-Aid.

The Grant-in-Aid is supplemented by funds raised from private sources, in the form of sponsorships, donations, exhibition admissions, hire fees, and profits from retail, publishing and catering trading operations.\r\nIn the earliest days of the Tate there was no separate department for finance as the entire Gallery's staff consisted of a handful of people. Consequently finance records were often absorbed into the files series called Miscellaneous and General. From c.1950 separate series of finance records started to be kept. The Finance Department is now part of the Finance and Administration Directorate.