City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby dutchman » Fri Mar 03, 2023 11:59 pm

Mayor calls for Coventry City of Culture Trust investigation

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The mayor of the West Midlands has called for an investigation into the Coventry City of Culture Trust after it went into administration on Tuesday.

The appointment of administrators had resulted in the loss of the trust's three-year legacy project and 50 jobs.

MPs Zarah Sultana, Marcus Jones and Matt Western have all demanded answers from the trust.

But Mayor Andy Street told BBC CWR there should be a "proper investigation" led by the city council.

Coventry City Council has not responded to questions of whether it supported an investigation into the trust.

"It's incredibly disappointing news," Mr Street said, adding that people had relied on the trust and had lost their jobs.

"This is public money and we need to know how we got to this position."

Mr Street suggested an investigation should be led by the city council first, instead of a parliamentary review, to understand how the trust had fallen into financial difficulty.

"We can't just lose the legacy because the trust has gone," he said.

The demand for answers was echoed by Mr Jones, Conservative MP for Nuneaton, who called the news "extremely concerning".

Mr Western, Labour MP for Warwick and Leamington, said he was "shocked and disappointed" to learn of the trust going into administration, adding that he would ask urgent questions to understand what had happened.

Michael Mogan, fundraising director for the trust until 2019, said a parliamentary review should be held to establish what had gone wrong at the trust and to work out whether its financials issues had been monitored.

An emergency meeting to discuss the trust will be held by the council's Finance and Corporate Services Scrutiny Board on 9 March.

It has not yet been confirmed if any representatives of the trust will attend the meeting.

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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby rebbonk » Sat Mar 04, 2023 3:25 pm

...Mayor Andy Street told BBC CWR there should be a "proper investigation" led by the city council.


I beg to differ. The council are implicated and it has an interest in this, it should be kept out. Any investigation must be totally impartial.

As far as I can see, the council had already failed to review this organisation properly when they agreed to squander OUR money. Also, an independent enquiry might show up any 'malpractice' by the council.
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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby dutchman » Sat Mar 04, 2023 3:56 pm

Arts group calls on council to pay Coventry City of Culture Trust's debts

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An arts group has called on a council to pay out £1.5m it is owed in debts by Coventry City of Culture Trust after it entered administration.

Assembly Festival, which ran the Assembly Festival Gardens, said its future was at risk and appealed for the city's local authority to "take responsibility" for the situation.

The Trust had been due to oversee a three-year legacy programme.

Coventry City Council says it "appreciates the concerns" raised.

It comes as the West Midlands Mayor Andy Street called for an investigation into Coventry City of Culture Trust after it announced on Tuesday it had entered administration, with 50 people losing their jobs.

A letter to Coventry City Council was sent by Assembly Festival's artistic and company director William Burdett-Coutts on Friday.

The letter, seen by the BBC, said: "Assembly Festival worked for nearly two years on delivering the Assembly Festival Garden, the centre piece of the year, for the people of Coventry.

"With the news that the Coventry City of Culture Trust has been placed into administration we are left in a position of being owed £1,476,550 of which £419k is VAT."

The letter goes on to say the council should take responsibility for repaying the debt "both from a moral and legal point of view".

"Coventry now faces a situation where all the good that came out of the year will be severely marred," Mr Burdett-Coutts wrote.

Assembly Festival Gardens ran for two summers in 2021 and 2022 as a pop-up venue in Coventry as part of the City of Culture celebrations.

The attraction put on 140 shows and welcomed almost 500,000 visitors.

A spokesperson from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the government was "monitoring the situation" and "hopes to see local partners continue to work on the legacy of Coventry as City of Culture 2021".

In a statement Coventry City Council said "City of Culture Trust is a separate, independent organisation to which the council had no direct control over".

A spokesperson for the authority added: "The council has also not provided any form of indemnity or guarantee to Assembly Festival on the sums they have incurred as a consequence of any contractual arrangement they have with the Trust."

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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby rebbonk » Sun Mar 05, 2023 3:20 pm

Most definitely not!

The council must not waste more of OUR money to pay off debts run by this organisation.
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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby dutchman » Wed Mar 08, 2023 6:54 pm

City of Culture Trust selling TikTok account and coffee machines to help clear debts

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Coffee machines and a Tik Tok account are some of the things being sold off by the charity set up to manage Coventry's City of Culture year and legacy. Administrators for the doomed Coventry City of Culture Trust have started selling the company's assets as creditors wait to hear how much money they will be paid back.

The Trust went into administration last Tuesday (28 February) after weeks of uncertainty over its financial woes. Fifty jobs in the city were lost and a planned three-year legacy programme for the City of Culture year is now in doubt.

Now the charity is selling off its assets such as 'general cafe equipment' and high tech projectors which were likely used in the Reel Store. Buyers can also get their hands on six social media accounts - including a TikTok with around 400 followers - and 55 associated domain names.

Leases for two city centre premises and a customer mailing list are also up for grabs. One of the leases is for The Reel Store, a space in the former Coventry Telegraph offices and billed as the UK's "first permanent digital art gallery."

The other is for office space in the Herbert Art Gallery. The Trust's customer mailing list has around 30,000 names on and is subject to usual GDPR processes, we understand.

The asset sale appeared on the BPI asset advisory website on Sunday March 6 and it ends at noon this Friday March 10.

Taxpayers now waiting to hear how much of a £1 million Coventry council loan to the Trust it will be getting back now the charity has gone bust. Overall, the Trust owes the council around £1.6 million pounds.

But last week city councillors were briefed that just 8.3% of this - around £150,000 - is likely to be paid back at most. Prestigious arts group Assembly Festival is also owed almost £1.5 million by the Trust, it emerged last week.

The organisation, which runs more than 200 shows at the Edinburgh fringe, said its future is at risk because of the debt and has called on the council for help.

Asked about its £1 million loan last week, Coventry council said: "The loan to the Trust was an attempt to try and secure the agreed arts and cultural legacy programme through until March 2024 which went through the relevant political decision-making process.

"It was always clear that risks remained in terms of the Trust being able to continue its operations until March 2024 and we are disappointed this has proved to be the case. We will now work with the administrator to secure the best outcome we can."

An emergency meeting to consider the City of Culture Trust's financial problems will take place at Coventry City Council on Thursday March 9. Officers of the City of Culture Trust have been invited to attend.

But neither of the Trust's joint administrators will be going, and if Trustees or former directors attend this will be in a personal capacity, the LDRS understands. And only accounts that are already publicly available up until March 31 2022, are likely to be shared with the meeting.

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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby dutchman » Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:48 pm

Fury as 'embarrassing' meeting on Coventry City of Culture Trust fails to give answers

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Martin Sutherland, Chenine Bhathena and Laura McMillan, did not attend the meeting

An eagerly awaited council meeting to look into the finances of the failed City of Culture Trust ended after less than half an hour - with no answers for the public.

Councillors voted by five to three to delay yesterday's meeting (9 March) to a later date after it became clear no-one with any responsibility would be answering questions.

But the move left members of the public in the meeting's gallery furious.

READ MORE: Coventry City of Culture Trust selling TikTok account and coffee machines to help clear debts

Mary Courteney stood up and said: "This is absolutely appalling, don't you know you're supposed to be serving the public?"

She called the meeting "a total embarrassment" and asked "what is the guarantee that the Trust will actually turn up next time?"

The meeting of the council's Scrutiny Board was set up to look into concerns over the City of Culture Trust - the charity responsible for the city's year of culture and its legacy.

The Trust went bust last month despite getting millions in funding and now owes the City Council £1.6 million - including money from a £1 million loan agreed in October.

City of Culture officers did not turn up to meeting

Before the Trust went into administration, Councillor Ed Ruane backed by others on the Board called for an urgent meeting to consider the charity's financial position and the risk to public finances.

But at the meeting yesterday afternoon none of the former officers from the Trust who were invited by the Chair turned up to answer questions.

Former Chief Executive Martin Sutherland, former Creative Director Chenine Bhathena and former director of Audience Strategy Laura McMillan all failed to show.

Members of the Board were also told at a pre-meeting that senior council officers, including the acting CEOs, would not be answering questions on the grounds that this would be outside the meeting's limits.

Cabinet Members Cllr Richard Brown and Cllr David Welsh did attend and planned on giving statements at the meeting providing more context around the £1 million loan given in October.

But their plans were scuppered as about five minutes after the public meeting started, Labour councillors called for the session to be adjourned to March 29 to avoid "going round in circles."

Cllr John McNicholas led calls and said the wording of the meeting's notice needed to be fixed so the relevant people could be called in to answer.

Cllr Ed Ruane, who seconded the motion, said: "We want as much accountability, questions and answers as anybody else.

"What we want to ensure is that the appropriate people are sat round the table and are able to furnish us with that information by answering those questions.

"If those people here today aren't able to answer those questions for whatever reason then we're just going to go round in circles."

Asked by Cllr Jayne Innes to read out advice from the pre-meeting, Chair Cllr Auluck stressed that the meeting had certain "parameters."

She said: "It was a matter for the City of Culture Trust to come and answer questions. Nobody from the Trust has attended. Therefore there is no way of tabling those questions and getting those answers."

Coventry council's Monitoring Officer Julie Newman added: "The rules still apply around who you can ask questions of. And this meeting as I understand it has been called to question City of Culture Trust.

"And unfortunately they're not here today to answer those questions which limits the ability of us to therefore move this forward."

But Cllr Innes said she believed the meeting's notice - which said the meeting would look into the risk to public finances as well as the Trust's own position - allows for questions to officers about money loaned by the council.

Cllr Ruane added: "This is a risk to public finances, we are a public local authority. It's a question of how people wish to interpret it."

However, he continued to push for the meeting to be moved later so "everybody who was involved can answer those questions."

Meeting branded a 'circus' by furious members of public

But Conservative councillors objected to the adjournment, saying questions needed to be answered today.

Members of the group had a list of 27 questions to ask including eight for councillors and officers.

Cllr Tim Sawdon said: "It seems to me that this is just an exercise in obfuscation rather than us getting down to the nitty gritty of what members of the public are asking time and time again - well what went on?"

He asked council officers if the city council is a guarantor of the Trust in any way but this was not answered.

Cllr Auluck intervened, saying it "takes us into the territory of asking questions of officers who may not be in a position to answer that for various reasons."

But Cllr McNicholas said: "I think officers' silence answers Cllr Sawdon's question. And that's what we would have been facing all afternoon."

However, Mary and others in the public gallery were unhappy about the outcome with mutters of "shame" after the vote.

Mary told the meeting: "It's really bad. It just has to be said. I was hoping to hear proper debate in here."

She later told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "An appalling evasion of important questions. We deserve better."

She added: "They seem to have forgotten they are supposed to serve the public. It is our money and we want answers."

Heather Davison was also fuming at the outcome. She said: "Circus comes to mind. It felt like a decision to go for an amendment had already been made pre meeting."

"I left feeling let down for myself and for the people of Coventry. We deserve better."

Coventry Conservatives leader Cllr Gary Ridley condemned the move as a "total lack of transparency" from the council and its Labour administration.

He said his group would be calling for a public inquiry into the management of the Trust at the next full council meeting.

But Conservative councillors stayed after the meeting for an hour to help agree the new wording for the meeting on 29 March.

This later meeting will call for both Trust and council accounts to be shared with the Board.

Councillors have also demanded to know the amount of money held by the Trust so they can consider how far loan conditions and deliverables were met.

And the meeting will explicitly consider potential risks to the Coventry City Council’s reputation and City Council finances, including implications and mitigations for the loan made in October 2022.

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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby dutchman » Thu Mar 30, 2023 1:10 pm

Culture trust shuns second scrutiny meeting

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Board members from the collapsed City of Culture Trust have shunned a second invitation to a scrutiny meeting.

Coventry City Council invited all 21 board members to a meeting on Wednesday, but only one attended.

The council is seeking answers following the collapse of Coventry City of Culture Trust in February, leaving unpaid debts.

A three-year legacy programme of events after Coventry's year as City of Culture in 2021 will no longer proceed.

The local authority has called for a government-led inquiry and the Charity Commission has confirmed it is examining the trust's finances.

Labour councillor Randhir Aucluck chaired the meeting and said the one board member who had attended, former chair David Burbidge, had been "very reassuring".

"So I think it would have been enormously helpful if more members of the trust had joined us," she said.

"I think it would have added to reassuring the committee that matters had been handled appropriately rather than leaving doubts that perhaps things took place in a way that wasn't appropriate."

It is the second time board members from the City of Culture Trust have declined an invitation to attend a scrutiny meeting. However, the council said this time it had received written responses from 14.

The meeting heard more details about the trust's financial situation before it entered administration earlier this year.

It was revealed the trust was expecting a large grant worth about £1m which never materialised, creating a cash flow problem that could not be recovered.

Councillors also heard the cost of the legacy programme had been underestimated.

Initially forecast to cost £3.4m, it was revised a few months later up to £5.2m but the reason for this jump was not explained.

There is cross-party consensus within Coventry City Council, which previously agreed a £1m loan to the trust, that a government inquiry should take place.

Tim Sawdon, the Conservative shadow cabinet member for scrutiny, told the BBC he was "really concerned" the legacy programme had fallen by the wayside.

"We need to get to the bottom of it quickly so we can reassure people as to whether it was run properly," he said.

"A large amount of government money went into it which is why I think there ought to be a more national look at it."

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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby rebbonk » Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:49 pm

I think this tells us all we need to know.

Now, let's rout the imbecilic councillors that wanted to support this half-baked scheme...
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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby dutchman » Tue Apr 04, 2023 4:32 am

Culture trust to be examined by financial watchdog

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The National Audit Office (NAO) is to look into the Coventry City of Culture finances after it went into administration.

"Preliminary enquiries" are being made after the organisation entered administration in February.

It received more than £20.4m from Arts Council England and the government since 2015, a BBC investigation found.

The company's collapse meant its three-year programme of events, part of its heritage legacy plans, will not go ahead.

Coventry held the title of City of Culture in 2021.

Its year long reign was delayed by the Covid pandemic but oversaw aerial displays, light shows, musical performances and theatre. It ended with Harry Styles and other musicians at the BBC1 Big Weekend.

The initial inquiry will aim to establish the sources involved in funding the trust and the extent of them, the NAO said.

"The remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s statutory powers means we can only investigate matters relating to spending by government departments and other central government bodies," the watchdog's director Louise Bladen added.

The Heritage Lottery Fund told the BBC it allocated £3m to the trust.

The organisation received more than £6.5m from a combination of Coventry City Council, the West Midlands Combined Authority and Warwickshire County Council.

Documents made public as part of the city council's investigations into the collapse revealed £3.3m was committed to the trust by the government as of September to deliver its legacy programme.

The trust also expected £2.5m of lottery funding as part of a £15.8m total predicted income it had budgeted for the legacy phase.

A government-led inquiry has been called for by the local authority.

The Charity Commission previously confirmed it was also examining the trust's finances.

A residents’ group named Lost City of Culture has called for an independent investigation into the collapse and more than 400 people have signed a petition calling for the inquiry.

The Public Accounts Select Committee told the BBC it has no plans to investigate at this stage but said it was often guided by the findings of the NAO.

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Re: City of Culture to be loaned £1m in public cash by council in move that's 'not without risk'

Postby dutchman » Fri Apr 14, 2023 10:36 pm

Toilet rolls auctioned to pay culture trust's debts

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Packs of jumbo toilet rolls are are among items to be auctioned after the Coventry City of Culture Trust went into administration.

They are among nearly 400 items being sold to try and cover debts.

Coventry held the title of City of Culture in 2021. It entered administration in February meaning a three-year legacy programme could not go ahead.

Creditors include Coventry City Council which is owed £1.6m.

The Assembly Festival group, which ran the popular Assembly Festival Gardens attraction, is owed nearly £1.5m.

Other items up for sale on an online auction website include an electric fly killer machine, a defibrillator and two signed rugby shirts.

Laptops, computer monitors, microwaves and fridges have also been listed along with merchandise from the Reel Store and the City of Culture year.

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At least now we know who was buying them all!
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