A report commissioned by Arts Council England has revealed that subsidised theatres are putting on three times as many new plays as they were a decade ago.

The report, designed to assess the impact of the council's 2003 funding boost for theatre, has discovered that that 47% of works staged in large subsidised theatres are new, a significant increase from a figure of 14% back in 2000. The British Theatre Consortium report concludes: "New plays no longer appear to be ghettoised in small spaces. New play productions are evenly divided between auditoria of under and over 200 seats. Over the period of our sample, nine out of ten tickets for new plays were sold for main stages".

BTC member and playwright David Edgar welcomed the news, telling The Stage: "That I think is good, because it demonstrates that playwrights are being employed in a variety of different ways and that playwrights are now much more a part of theatre-making than they were ten to 15 years ago". He went on, however  to criticise ACE’s removal of new writing from its funding priorities a couple of years ago. "One of the ironies is that the arts council has slightly turned its back on new writing and new writing is not a priority because it is more interested in experimental and innovative ways of theatre-making, including devising", he said. "Just when that is happening, their earlier policies and support for new writing has suddenly become successful".