The council, which is financed by the government but operates independently, distributes lottery money to filmmakers and promotes Britain’s $10.8 billion film industry. While it is by no means universally loved, people in the industry say that it serves an important function by removing politics from decisions about which film projects to support.

The government said that the Film Council’s work would be absorbed by another agency. But it has not said how.

Also last month, the government canceled a 20-year, $87 billion program to refurbish high schools and build new ones across the country. While the government said it would immediately stop work on about 700 planned new buildings and services, it said work could go ahead on about 700 others. But it repeatedly failed to correctly identify which schools were on which list, leading to widespread confusion. George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, and Prime Minister David Cameron have said that almost every function of government will be up for grabs, and that cabinet members will have to make a case for every expenditure. That has prompted a huge round of maneuvering and lobbying from groups that will be affected  just about every group in the country.

The director of the Tate Gallery, Sir Nicholas Serota, warned that “what you will see across the country is organizations closing, theaters going dark, galleries being closed.” The BBC is trying to make the case for keeping the $226 annual license fee that television viewers pay the government each year. The police say that planned cuts in the antiterrorism budget would make it harder to fight Al Qaeda.

Public-sector unions are planning a series of strikes. Charities  which Mr. Cameron has said should take over some of the responsibilities now held by the state  say that they are at risk of collapse because they are so dependent on government money.

And the chief executive of the Supreme Court, the country’s highest, said she did not know whether the court would be able to function at all if its budget were cut by 40 percent.

In Coventry, Mr. Mutton said that the City Council was bracing for an uncertain future.

“The worst bit is yet to come,” he said. “We’re not just talking about cuts in services, but real people losing their jobs, not being able to pay their mortgages, families becoming homeless. I don’t want to be scare-mongering, but these are the kind of consequences we face.”