Four bidders wanting to take over Sutton’s two theatres have made it through the outline bid stage and will now be invited to submit full business cases.
This decision was taken by Thursday’s Environment and Neighbourhood’s Committee after almost 1,178 people had their say on the future of the service through a mixture of a telephone survey, an online consultation and stakeholder meetings.
The eight week consultation was part of the council’s Sutton Future campaign which encourages residents to help the council achieve £40m of savings from its annual budget by 2019. The savings are being forced by unprecedented government reductions to funding and growing demand for council services.
The council proposed to relinquish ownership of the Charles Cryer Studio Theatre and Secombe Theatre by allowing interested parties to take over their ownership and management if they had viable business cases. If not, the theatres would be sold.
The council put on workshops, building tours and an information pack working alongside bodies including the Theatres Trust and Sutton Centre for Voluntary Services in order to help bidders.
As a result, four bids came forward, and they now have until 12 December to submit their full business cases. The decision was based on detailed analysis of the submissions by Sutton Council.
The assessment criteria for the full business cases will be on finance and sustainability as well as community value, and the Theatres Trust will undertake an artistic evaluation.
The Committee also decided the work to develop plans for an arts development outreach service should wait until after a decision is taken on the theatres. The proposed service was met with strong public support (77%) in the consultations.
Jill Whitehead, Chair of the Environment and Neighbourhoods Committee, said:
“We are delighted that over 1,000 people have had their say on the future of cultural services and we have four bids that have made it through to the next stage.
“With the budgetary pressures we have been put under, it is simply not possible for us to continue to maintain and run theatres that are used by a minority of our residents.
“It is important that bidders can demonstrate they can have the financial resources and business plan to manage them without council support. We have to be realistic as we have a duty to ensure value for money with public assets.”
Consultation
From the telephone survey of 1001 residents, which was a representative survey of residents across Sutton, 11% said they had visited the Charles Cryer Studio Theatre in the last 12 months and 14% had visited the Secombe Theatre.
From the online survey taken by 177 residents, 48% said they had visited the Secombe Theatre in the past 12 months, and 47% said they had visited the Charles Cryer Studio Theatre.
In both the telephone survey and the online survey, 77% of residents supported the idea of having an arts development outreach service.