Open air theatre is empty but staff are kept busy
IT SHOULD have been playing host to the likes of Nile Rodgers and Alfie Boe, who was lined up to perform at a special Armed Forces Day concert in late June. But this summer Scarborough’s open air theatre will stand empty.
As Scarborough Borough Council responded to the challenge of dealing with the pandemic, a decision was quickly made to redeploy the staff who would been organising events at the venue.
One employee has now been moved to the team responsible for handing out the business grants to cash-starved local businesses, many of whom have been hit hard by the loss of tourism income during the crucial Easter weekend.
The cancellation of the summer season of concerts in the resort town, featuring the likes of Lionel Ritchie, Westlife and Little Mix, has been devastating for the tourism industry and the local firms that depend on it.
And the council has been working seven days a week to ensure the more than £50m in grants from central government for small businesses, going to some 4,400 firms around the borough, gets out the door as soon as possible.
Scarborough Borough Council faces a huge shortfall of £12m, equivalent to nearly 50 per cent of its budget, as a result of a fall in income and the extra costs needed to tackle the crisis.
The borough sees more cases of homelessness than its more affluent North Yorkshire neighbours, with the number of people in temporary accommodation more than doubling from 45 to 100 during the crisis.
And the loss of tourism revenue has been particularly significant, with the council missing out on expected funding from parking as well as its own commercial investments, like a hotel.
“All that money is used to plug the gap in service delivery on the back of a quite significant reduction in funding over a number of years,” says the council’s chief executive Mike Greene.
Stressing the positives, he says the lack of international tourism as the world waits for a vaccine may mean domestic resorts like Scarborough and Whitby could see benefit from a spike in visitor numbers. “The challenge for us as a local authority is how we help them to still operate with social distancing,” he says.
But in the longer term, town halls like his will play a vital role in regenerating local economies once the worst of the pandemic is over.
He said: “We need to be able to support our economy and our community to get back on their feet. We’re going to have a really crucial role so it’s very difficult unless something is done.”