Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Council to quit venue as it faces £500,000 loss
SOMERSET County Council is to end its operations at Dillington House in a bid to prevent further losses for taxpayers.
The council has run adult education courses from the 16th-century venue near Ilminster for decades, recently diversifying into weddings, conferences and other corporate events.
The venue has been struggling to make ends meet for more than a decade, predicting to lose more than £500,000 over the current financial year and struggling to regain much of the pre-coronavirus business which it enjoyed.
The council’s executive has now decided to break away from the venue, seeking to end its lease and remove all of its operations on the site by the end of 2023.
Dillington House is a Grade I-listed manor located between Ilminster and the A303, boasting
43 en-suite bedrooms across three buildings and 13 meeting rooms of various sizes.
It was once the home of Lord North, who served as Prime Minister between 1770 and 1782, and was used as a vaccination hub during the earlier stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
The site has historically focused on adult education, and is the home of the Somerset Centre for Integrated Learning (SCIL), whose courses are accredited by the University of Worcester.
In recent times, the site has attempted to diversify its income by hosting weddings, conferences and providing bed-and-breakfast accommodation on-site.
The wider Dillington Estate has also recently become the chosen venue of the Shindig Festival, which used to be held at Gilcombe Farm near Bruton.
It costs Somerset taxpayers around £2 million a year to run Dillington House, which has struggled for many years to turn a profit.
Between 2009/10 and 2019/20, the venue accumulated a deficit of £1.8 million, and is forecast to run a deficit of £502,000 in the current financial year.
The council also has a duty to maintain the structure of the listed buildings, with a 2020 survey identifying “significant liabilities” which will need to be addressed.
On top of all this, the council is still repaying a loan it took out to construct the Hyde building within the estate in 2009 – a loan which currently stands at £1,665,000, with average repayments of £170,000 a year.
The council pays £1,435 per year to rent the site as part of a 99-year lease with the Cameron Estate, which will officially end in 2062.
As part of this lease agreement, there are “break clauses” available, allowing either party to get out of the lease early if the arrangement is no longer financially beneficial to them.
The next break clause point will be on March 25, 2023, with the council having to give six months’ notice before this date if it wants to end the lease.
If it does nothing, the council would have to wait until March 2043 – more than 20 years – before any further such discussion regarding the lease could take place.
A study carried out for the council by the Local Government Association (LGA) said the return of the lease was the best option, with the council’s own social care team confirming that the buildings would not be suitable for any alternative use.
The council will be formally giving its six months’ notice to the Cameron Estate that it wishes to end its lease on Dillington House.
On the surface, this would suggest that all council operations on site – including weddings – would cease in March 2023. But it isn’t quite that simple.
In practice, the council would have to cease offering courses and all other activities by late-January 2023, allowing two months for its staff to leave and all buildings to be cleared out, at a cost of around £53,000.
There are already 18 weddings booked to be held at the venue up to March 2023, with a further 16 due to take place there before September 2023.
A rapid closure would result in all of these bookings, and others, having to be cancelled – resulting in a “significant reputational [sic] and operational impact” for the council.
Instead, the council will seek to change the terms of the lease – known legally as a deed of variation – to allow bookings to be honoured until September 2023, with all staff and property to be removed by November 2023.
The issue was widely debated by the council’s executive committee when it met at County Hall in Taunton on Wednesday morning.
Councillor Sarah Wakefield, associate portfolio holder for development and assets, said she was confident that the council would be able to continue delivering adult education provision at other venues.
She said: “I think this has been a very difficult decision to come to, but I do think it is the right one. We do not need to run a wedding venue in my view, and I’m comforted that the other services can be moved to other venues.”
Councillor Ros Wyke, portfolio holder for development and assets, concurred: “Over the last ten years or so, the previous administration worked very hard to find a viable and effective solution to running this house and the courses. I’m totally convinced we can find alternative locations for these courses.
“Life has moved on. The family is very happy to take back the building and no doubt will have plans for the future. I have no doubt that the building and the landscape will be cared for.”
Once the lease has been formally exited, SCIL may still be offered the opportunity to lease rooms at Dillington House for up to one year as part of a transition period.
Efforts will be made to “redeploy” the existing 32 permanent staff based at Dillington House (along with 25 casual employees), though Mr Roswell said he could not rule out redundancies.
I have no doubt that the building and the landscape will be cared for CLLR ROS WYKE