In Council run projects or businesses, there is never what I call the 'necessity to succeed' that all private businesses have. Porth Eirias is a prime example of this, a compete mishmash of nonsense that would never have been approved in the private sector in a million years.
I wonder, however, if private industry would ever have built the facility in the first place? If we take the skip out of it for a moment, do we have any figures on the running cost of VC and usage stats over a two year period? I'm asking this because I personally know little about the place, other than the couple of events I've attended were packed out.
Figures are here:
In the
year to March 2012 the Venue Cymru incurred expenditure of
£6,672,000. As a Local Authority run venue it operates a balanced budget but
the local authority does hold reserves of £222,000 for repairs and renewals for
both of the council run theatres. The
contribution by the Local Authority in the
year was £1,772,000 (27% of income) with revenue funding from the Arts
Council of £78,000 (1% of funding) with the remaining income being earned
income.
For the
year to March 2013 the organisation incurred £5,673,121 of
expenditure. A lottery project grant of £45,000 was received in the year in
addition to the annual revenue funding. The
local authority supplied funds
totalling £1,810,994, £609,131 of which were for capital costs and central
support charges which are outside the control of the theatre management. The
earned income in the year was £3,639,737 and to achieve a balanced budget
the reserves of £222,000 were used.