The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Theatre that snubbed planning law faces closure
Catherine Lough
AN AMATEUR theatre chief is embroiled in a planning row with a Hampshire council after he sanctioned the covert construction of a 450seat venue.
Kevin Fraser, artistic director at Titchfield Festival Theatre (TFT), gave the go ahead for a new £1.7 million performing arts hub despite two previous applications being rejected by Fareham borough council.
Since 2010 the theatre has staged productions from a converted barn containing two auditoriums capable of seating 100 and 200 people.
But with hundreds of children using the venue every week and a busy programme of up to 40 shows a year, bosses decided to expand the venue to include a third area with a capacity of more than 450 people.
The 67-year-old former Foreign Office diplomat said legal advice was taken before TFT pressed ahead with its long-planned expansion.
But the long-term future of the new venue, the Arden, has been thrown into uncertainty after Fareham council served Mr Fraser with an enforcement notice requiring the new theatre to close by Feb 29 unless an appeal is lodged. One councillor said the decision to build a new 450-seat venue without planning permission “beggars belief ”, adding the space was only intended to be used for storage.
But Mr Fraser, who was a diplomat in the 1970s, insisted the site’s long-term use for community theatre meant planning permission was not necessary.
Describing Fareham council as packed full of “Scrooges” and “Grinches”, he claimed the TFT had fallen victim to a “vindictive vendetta” by Conservative members who are scared of competition between it and a council-run theatre expected to open next year.
“Titchfield Festival Theatre is the largest community theatre in Europe as well as being the only fully sustainable green theatre in Europe,” he said.
“Fareham borough council clearly don’t want competition, they want to negate it. There are 20 theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue in London – why can’t we have two in Fareham? We are not going anywhere and will still continue. But we are being pestered and hounded – and at Christmas, hence why I call them the Grinches and Scrooges.”
Mr Fraser said the row was likely to feature in the upcoming pantomime and that he was ready to challenge attempts to close the venue. “There might be a few jokes about ‘Can you put that statue there? Have you got planning permission?’ That kind of thing, to keep the story alive.
“Even if they win and close the Arden down, we still have our two other theatres at the front. We are not going anywhere and will still continue,” he added.
Fareham borough council said: “The new theatre has been created in a space which had previously been granted planning permission for use as storage.”
Construction in defiance of council refusal could see venue shut down