Special meeting to discuss Civic Hall

THE shock decision to close the Bedworth Civic Hall will be debated.

A special scrutiny committee meeting will be held on Thursday, November 17, at the Town Hall where the decision to close the venue will be the sole topic.

The topic was feverishly debated during a heated Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council meeting where frustrated cries were made from the public gallery about a lack of consultation over the council’s decision to not reopen the venue once it stops being a vaccination centre at the end of this month.

The scrutiny committee meeting is not a public meeting, nor is it a public consultation, something that campaigners have demanded. Members of the public will, however, be given the chance to submit questions to the meeting.

Tempers flared over the council’s decision to close the venue. It says it simply cannot afford to run the hall anymore after millions of pounds has been spent on subsidising it over the last six years.

Resident Helen Sinclair asked why a public consultation is being held into the future of Keresley Community Centre and not the Civic Hall while Sam Margrave made another impassioned speech, calling on the council to defer the closure decision.

“It’s time for a U-turn and an apology, it’s time to stop levelling down and start levelling up,” he said. Wendy Small called for a public consultation to be held into the plans and asked why it could not follow suit of other councils, such as Coventry, which gives grants to the Belgrade Theatre, which is a registered charity, or Wolverhampton, where its venue is run by a private company.

Councillor Kyle Evans asked Town Hall leader, Councillor Kris Wilson, to explain why it was not viable for a charity to run the Civic Hall or for it to become a recognised ‘Community Asset.’ Cllr Wilson said that this would still cost the council money it cannot afford.

Not only against the backdrop of having to find £1m in savings to balance the books, but to also find the £1m needed to simply get the Civic Hall in a position maintenance-wise where it could be reopened. “If we are trying to look at putting it out to tender or some kind of trust, or another third party, they would expect us to give it to them in a workable condition,” he said.

“There is a difference between using the hall as a simple vaccination centre to a fully working theatre entertainment venue. The change of size and scale is enormous.

“They would expect us to do the basic remedial works including over £750,000 for three new boilers, but that doesn’t deal with the fundamental problems that sit behind the Civic Hall. Its design is of its age, it is a 1970s building with huge rooms, which require tremendous amounts of heat to keep going.

“The kitchen is in the wrong place, there is a labyrinth of rooms, all of which require heating and many require remedial works - some have mould and damp. If perhaps these issues had been dealt with before, we might not be where we are now.

“They (outside organisations) would want certain financial guarantees and subsidies from this council for a significant period of time that we simply cannot afford to undertake. If we keep it going, then something else must give.

“The reality is that we cannot afford to cut statutory services, it is a non-starter.”

Cllr Wilson added: “The reality is that the Civic Hall is costing us £840,000 a year to run, something we cannot continue to sustain, not with all of the other services that residents quite rightly expect this authority to run.

“The best we could have hoped for was a slight slimming of the costs from the Civic Hall if we had put it out to tender. But the reality is that we would have had to find the £1m necessary just to get it up to basic opening standard.

“I appreciate residents aren’t happy with this decision, this decision was thrust upon us because we had to make a call following the NHS letter to us just over a month ago. If we hadn’t had that letter, it may have afforded us some more time. We have statutory services that we have to provide by law, and we will protect those that we must do. The reality is that the Civic Hall is not a statutory service.”

The council has previously said that it plans for the town centre to have a replacement theatre, albeit it a smaller one, within a new ‘civic building’ with a library as well as new homes and a multi-storey car park along Rye Piece Ringway.but campaigners want the Civic Hall to remain where it is, in its current form.