How much art does your council own and is it locked away or on display?

More than 500,000 pieces of art are held in the collections of 225 councils, but the vast majority is being kept in storage. Local authorities remain "the biggest single constituent of public funding for arts and culture", according to the chief executive of the charity Art UK. Yet many face a strain on storage space and resources, with a real-term fall in spending for museums leading to challenges in displaying council-owned art.

Some of those collections include tens of thousands of pieces, with the largest collection of 125,000 works belonging to Waltham Forest Council. Only a fraction of councils were able to provide the value of the collection but even individual collections had insurance values worth millions of pounds. As of April, just 26,856 of more than half a million works were being displayed by the 225 councils who shared data with the BBC.

But what options do these local authorities have? Only one responding authority with more than 100 pieces of art - Rugby Council in Warwickshire - had them all on display.