A campaign group pushing for greater spending on the arts has removed Bath and North East Somerset Council from a list of shame.
The National Campaign for the Arts had initially placed the authority in the bottom eight of a league table of spending on culture.
But its claim that B&NES spent less than 1p per resident per week on the arts overlooked the fact that the success of the Roman Baths allows the authority to plough hundreds of thousands of pounds of tourism income into the sector.
The campaign had drawn on Government figures which include only net spending – excluding cultural income which is reinvested.
Now actor and director Samuel West – the son of actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales and chair of the NCA – has apologised.
He said: "Bath's income from the Roman Baths makes it a very special case. We should have made the fact that the figures were net clearer – sorry.
"All of us at the NCA are very grateful for the support the arts get from the council. We certainly didn't mean to suggest that Bath, a city I love, was anything other than very busy culturally. Having worked at the theatre twice and filmed in the city many times, I know it can be frantic. In fact I'm working on a programme for the festival in November as we speak."
The council's budget documents for the current financial year show planned expenditure of £512,131 on arts development – around 5p a week for every one of the 176,000 residents in the district.
Separate figures produced by the authority's cabinet member in charge of culture, Councillor Ben Stevens, claim £125.20 per person was spent on "culture and related services" in the last financial year – £2.40 a week, and adding up to £22 million.
He says this was the highest figure in the former Avon, Somerset and Wiltshire, with the budget suffering no cuts in the current year.
These figures, from the Local Government Association, include employee costs and running expenses.
In 2011/12, the council had spent £129.47 per head of population.
A survey for the NCA found that 63 per cent of people across the UK wanted to see their local council budgeting at least 50p per person every week on arts, museums and heritage.
The current average spend on culture per resident each week in England is 16p, with only three spending more than 50p.
Mr West said: "We would like to put a stop to the arts being the slightly easy targets of the accountants when they are sent a punishing budget from the government."
