Ice centre is down to the ‘bare bones’
MORE THAN 1,000 WORKERS ‘LAID OFF’ AS EVENTS AND ICE HOCKEY MATCHES ARE CANCELLED AND RINK IS CLOSED
THE head of the National Ice Centre has said it is operating on “bare bones” after seeing a huge drop in profits.
With no concerts since March, and now in the second lockdown, more than 1,000 workers have been “laid off”, with just 14.4 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff remaining.
The company is wholly owned by Nottingham City Council, and as well as operating the area and ice centre, also sells merchandise to festivals and other sporting events.
In a meeting on Tuesday, the chief executive said they had seen profits reduce by 94 percent during the pandemic, and that at the end of August, 1,194 casual staff and 80 permanent staff were either “laid off” or made redundant, with further job losses since then.
When the Government launched the furlough scheme, it said it was not intended to be used by public sector organisations.
However, because the ice centre is a council-owned company, rather than simply a council operation, it was eligible for the scheme.
Martin Ingham is the chief executive of the Motorpoint Arena and National Ice Centre.
Speaking to Nottingham City Council’s Companies Governance Executive sub-committee, he said: “We closed eight months ago, so March 17 the building was completely shut down.
“We didn’t reopen the skating side of things until September.
“So we lost the Panthers ice hockey season, we lost the play-offs and a lot of events in that period, and continue to do so.
“But we took action right away. By taking the ice out immediately we were saving money from the start.
“We furloughed our staff, 950 casual staff (on April 1) and 132 permanent staff, which had increased to 150 by June 1.
“Then as things didn’t improve, and it was clear that this was with us for the duration of the year, unfortunately we took the steps to start making redundancies, and on
August 31 we unfortunately lost 80 of our permanent staff, which was half, and we laid off all casual staff (1,194).
“So that was a huge impact on us, but we had no choice, and we took action because that was what was needed for the benefit of the company.”
Mr Ingham said that the Ice Locker stores had reopened (At Nottingham, Sheffield and Guildford rinks), and the restaurant was sold out for two nights over Hallowe’en weekend before they had to close again.
He added: “At the moment we are generating revenue, and we’re generating more revenue than it’s costing us to keep the building open.
“We’re covering the variable costs, we’re not actually making a profit, but we are covering the variable cost of leaving the ice in.
“We are still trading online with merchandise for festivals, and some ice sports.
“But, unfortunately, what this has shows us is with the timeframes we’ve got, we’ve had to take a further staff restructuring.
“Unfortunately we’ve made a further 20 redundancies, which leaves us down to about 60 staff.
“Then we’ve furloughed them down, 30 are full-time furloughed and we’re down now to 14.4 FTE staff at the moment, excluding the two coaches who are coaching the GB team.
“So we are really down to the bare bones at the moment, and just able to keep it going.
“In terms of where that’s going to leave us when we reopen, we don’t really know. We are going to try to have Christmas skating.
“Some staff will be un-furloughed, but quite a lot of our other staff will remain furloughed, or partially furloughed until April, and the current end of the furlough scheme, on the basis that we’re trying to retain as many staff as we can to be able to reactivate the arena, as and when the arena comes back.
“But unfortunately at this point in time our expectation is that the Motorpoint Arena will remain closed until late Spring 2021.”
At the moment ... we’re generating more revenue than it’s costing us to keep the building open. Martin Ingham