YORK Museums Trust has already seen massive cuts in its council funding because of austerity.

Now it has emerged the loss of this funding could result in yet further cuts, this time to its Arts Council grant.

The Trust was controversially forced to charge visitors for entry to the city art gallery when it reopened a month ago, blaming a huge reduction in its council grant. Three years ago it received £1.5 million a year in council funding. That was reduced to just £600,000 this year - and could be as little as £300,000 next year, according to the museums trust's chief executive Janet Barnes.

Now it has emerged that the severity of those cuts could lead to the trust losing some of its national funding.

Arts Council England last year provisionally granted the trust £3.6 million over the three years to 2018 - money awarded for specific projects that don't include the trust's running costs.

But Dr Barnes has warned that in future such Arts Council funding will depend on the trust not losing too much local authority support.

What a crazy situation. Whitehall slashes funding for local authorities, which are forced to cut support for the arts.

Then, because local authorities no longer support arts organisations, they are penalised even further - by Whitehall.

There's something very Orwellian about this. And isn't it odd that major national arts institutions - most based in London - don't seem to be affected?

Here's some news for our London-based political elite. Arts are a vital part of what makes a humane, civilised society. And that's just as true in the north of England as it is down south.

This punitive system of match-funding is crippling arts in the regions. It needs to be looked at again.