Can anyone tell me what the Arts Council actually do?

As far as I can discern, the Arts Council are a bunch of very well paid "arty types" who sit around in their very plush Executive Offices, surrounded by unnecessary papers, holding unnecessary meetings about what to do with all this Government money.
"Shall we give it to worthy and deserving causes?" they ask.
"Well," comes the response, "Why don't we have a meeting about it, and we can travel from around the country to a central location, and have lovely tasty sandwiches, and talk about it. Then, after we have purchased the office water coolers, enough files and folders to fill a warehouse and employed several PAs to fetch and carry for us, we'll pretty much be up to budget."

How can one organization have so many chief Executives? How can one organization have so many policies and procedures? I've never encountered such a tedious operation. Every process has to be documented and reviewed and monitored and archived. It is absolutely ludicrous.

What a chattering classes, justifying themselves by doing NOTHING, ridiculous gang they make up. And don't get me started on the mortifyingly transparent attempt at diversification.

Does anybody have a statistic regarding what percentage of the total Government funding is actually spent on the Arts? £1.7 million of Government money is going into the Arts this year, they promise. How much on top of that do they receive from government funding to maintain nine regional offices as well as two National offices?

....And Relax.

I will research my questions and return.