Pall Mall club gets taxpayers’ cash to furlough its staff
ONE of the country’s most exclusive private members’ clubs has been accused of ‘milking’ the taxpayer by taking furlough money and continuing to charge full fees while closed.
The Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall, London, has used the scheme to cover up to 80 per cent of its staff’s wages and plans to do so until March. This is despite not having its usual running and catering costs – and sitting on nearly £3.5 million in reserves, according to its latest accounts.
The club’s members include comedian Stephen Fry, Lord Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong and Oxford University chancellor, and author Martin Amis. The Duke of Edinburgh is an honorary member of the club, which is usually is open only to alumni of the two universities via a strict waiting list.
It has continued to charge membership rates of up to £1,500 a year even while closed during the two national lockdowns.
At the start of the pandemic its wealthy members offered to set up a fund to help pay staff wages, but the club turned this down in favour of taxpayer furlough cash.
It has protected its profits and maintained its full cash fund – which last year was used to buy a £50,000 Steinway piano. As well as the furlough scheme, it has benefited from frozen business rates and frozen bank loan payments during the pandemic, all of which lowered its running costs.
Club members last night expressed their concern. One told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It is hard to express just how disappointed I am that the club has seen fit to waste taxpayer money in so spectacularly inappropriate a manner during the worst pandemic in a hundred years. Why is the multimillion-pound reserve fund being used to pay for a £50,000 piano, when the club is milking the taxpayer to keep the club afloat?’
In messages to members, the club has said it lost £1.15 million in income from not being able to let out its accommodation. However most of its revenue comes from subscriptions, which brought in £3.6 million in 2019, and it has not incurred the usual running costs.
Its accounts show that at the end of last year, the club had more than £800,000 in cash, and £2.6 million in its reserve fund.
Other private members’ clubs have frozen membership fees while closing their doors, or given the money back to members as vouchers.
The Oxford and Cambridge Club made headlines in 2017 after a waitress was fired for taking a piece of lasagne home.
Silvia Mecati had been given the meal by the club but did not have time to eat it at work, so she put it in her bag for when she got home – before being accused of stealing.
The club declined to comment and would not say whether it continued to pay full salaries to its executives while closed.