City's Festivals funding plan exits stage left
Plus: Princes Street reopening slips back; Sir Harry Lauder Day campaign; and Lottery joy for LGBTQ+ book archive
Drama at City Chambers as council pulls Festivals funding plan
The City Chambers seems to be trying to rival the Fringe for drama after the council pulled plans at the last-minute to increase its Festivals funding for the first time in a decade.
The introduction of the city’s Visitor Levy this summer - expected to raise up to £50 million a year - was supposed to be good news for the Festivals, delivering extra funding for arts and culture in the capital.
Instead, the Festivals are warning of looming cuts to their programmes as they approach their 80th anniversary next year, in the face of extra annual costs from the Visitor Levy estimated at more than £1.1m.
Fringe Society chief executive Tony Lankester, Book Festival director Jenny Niven and Lori Anderson, director of Festivals Edinburgh, the umbrella group representing all the city’s festivals, were all due to make direct pleas for more funding to the council’s culture and communities committee.
That showdown was avoided when committee convener, Labour councillor Margaret Graham, faced the embarrassment of pulling the plug on the proposed 5% funding increase at the start of Thursday morning’s meeting.
How did we get here? The dropping of the 5% plan - which also included a £1.5m innovation fund - has been reported to be a result of bureaucratic delay, with council officials submitting their committee report “a few minutes” late. While that’s technically true, make no mistake, this was a political decision. The council’s minority Labour administration faced being unable to get its plans through when the SNP and Lib Dems (the two largest parties on the local authority) backed alternative proposals to quadruple the funding increase.
Festivals facing net loss: A fundamental problem is that the Visitor Levy appears to be making the Festivals worse off rather than helping tackle their growing cost pressures. That might be the law of unintended consequences, but it was hardly unforeseen given the Festivals warned of the issue before the Levy was introduced and asked for an exemption for industry workers.
Giving with one hand: The council had proposed ringfencing £550,000 from Visitor Levy to fund the 5% uplift in support for the Festivals and other cultural organisations the local authority regularly supports. Around £140,000 of that would have gone directly to the city’s six major festivals, with the rest going to theatres, arts groups and other cultural organisations.
Taking with the other: However, in their collective submission to the council, the city’s major Festivals said the Visitor Levy is adding around £150,000 a year to their direct costs. (Soaring accommodation costs have seen the bill for putting up visiting authors, musicians, and so on, rise to around £3m a year.) When you add in the cost to Fringe promoters, venues and independent artists, the Festivals estimate their total Visitor Levy bill will be more than £1.1m a year.
‘Economic investment’: The Festivals are urging the council to view their financial support as an investment in the city’s key economic infrastructure, pointing to a recent report they commissioned estimating the economic value of the Festivals to Scotland at £852m a year.
The £1.5m question: The latest row comes down to the allocation of £1.5m - less than 0.1% of the council’s £1.6bn budget - which had been earmarked for the cultural “innovation” fund. Under the SNP and Lib Dems plans, it would be handed directly to the Festivals and other regularly-funded cultural institutions, giving them a £2m increase in core funding.
So, just give them the full £2m and everything’s ok? The Festivals, who say the 5% rise is “not enough to sustain, let alone develop, such unique civic assets”, would be far happier. But the council would have to abandon plans to tie most of the increased funding to “innovation”, such as special initiatives to open the Festivals to new audiences.
No ‘additionality’: That will leave the council open to accusations it has broken its promise to ensure Visitor Levy funding provides new facilities and services rather than simply replacing existing funding streams.
‘Closed shop’: The other downside is that arts groups who don’t already receive regular funding would lose the chance to bid for a share of the £1.5m fund.
What happens next? The city council’s political powerbrokers will sit down to thrash out a deal in the modern equivalent of smoky backrooms ahead of a special meeting of the culture and communities committee on 28 August. Any proposal will need to secure the support of at least three parties to be able to pass through the council.
YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING
THE ORIGINAL HARRY: Stand aside Harry Styles, make way for Sir Harry Lauder… The Portobello-born miner turned music hall star has been described as the world’s first pop star. Now a petition has been launched by US-based musician Carl Paterson to have 4 August declared Sir Harry Lauder Day to celebrate his legacy. It has so far attracted more than 6,000 signatures.
PRINCES ST DELAY: The reopening of Princes Street appears to be slipping back to the end of the month despite council leader Jane Meagher’s initial hopes that it may be possible by the middle of this week. Several of tonnes of rubble have been removed from the site but significant work is still ongoing.
BIGGER FINES: The city council has renewed its call to the Scottish Government to increase penalties for unlicensed short-term let operators. It wants maximum fines to be increased from £2,500 to £50,000 to put penalties in line with those for the unlicensed operation of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).
PASSIVHAUS SCHOOL: The 1,200-space Liberton High School has reopened as one of the first in Scotland to be built to Passivhaus standards. Currie High was the country’s first to meet the international standards for minimising energy consumption and reducing the reliance on active heating or cooling systems.
STAYING IN THE DARK: Network Rail says it has no plans to improve the night-time lighting of the Forth Bridge until 2030, despite only one in 20 of the lights currently working. The bridge is a Unesco World Heritage Site and the issue of the lighting has been raised by councillors in Fife.
KIDNAPPING ARRESTS: Five men and a woman have been arrested by armed police in Longniddry, East Lothian, over the alleged kidnapping of a 22-year-old man from the Canonmills area of the city. Police say the incident was “targeted” and there is no wider threat to the public. The alleged victim was taken to hospital as a precaution.
‘TOMBSTONING’ WARNING: The RNLI are warning about the dangers of ‘tombstoning’ after a 14-year-old boy injured his leg jumping into Dunbar Harbour. Tombstoning involves jumping into open water from a large height.
LAVENDER MENACE: The immediate future of the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive, at Edinburgh Palette, Meadowbank, has been secured thanks to a £119,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. The funding will improve access to the archive which has grown out of Scotland’s first LGBTQ+ bookshops, Lavender Menace and West & Wilde, in Edinburgh.
Pic of the week
THE BUSINESS
Capital finance chief warns against bank profit levy
Edinburgh’s hugely important financial services sector can deliver “even more well-paid, high quality jobs” – provided the Scottish and UK Governments work together and avoid damaging tax and regulatory policies.
Sandy Begbie, chief executive of leading trade body Scottish Financial Enterprise, has particularly warned the UK Government against a mooted multi-billion pound raid on bank profits.
He was reacting to the latest Edinburgh by Numbers figures posted by financial journalist Mark McSherry on social media, which show the sector provides more economic impact than the Capital’s next three largest sectors combined (property, health & social care and education) at almost £9 billion, supporting one in ten of the city’s jobs.
Begbie said: “Great figures for our sector but not a surprise for us. Our sector in Edinburgh and across Scotland has been growing year on year to a point where it is now contributing £17.7 billion to the Scottish economy. But we can go further and deliver even more well-paid, high-quality jobs however we require both UK and Scottish Governments to work together and also not introduce damaging tax or policy changes, for example the rumoured bank profit levy”
This refers to suggestions from some, including the TUC, that the UK Government should increase the tax it takes through levying bank profits on top of normal corporation tax by billions, depending on the level imposed.
He added: “Banks in the UK are already the highest taxed in Europe and we operate in a globally competitive market and such a levy would be detrimental to growth.
“Only by having policies focused on growth and a competitive tax regime can we fund our public services.”
NEW CHAIR: Edinburgh University spin-out company BIOCAPTIVA, which develops advanced cancer diagnostic technologies, has appointed Stephan Argivier as Chair to steer plans for international growth. The new Chair has 30 years of industry experience in life sciences, much of it leading private, venture-backed firms.
BANK SUCCESS: The Edinburgh-based independent private bank Hampden Bank has reported pre-tax profits for the six months to June 30 of £4.7 million, up 91% on the same period last year, with growth in deposits, lending and profitability.
FOUR STORES: Four new retailers have taken space at the Gyle Shopping Centre, including Danish décor and homeware store Søstrene Grene. The others are Black Sheep Coffee, home and cosmetics chain Rituals, and jewellery brand Nomination, according to property consultancy Savills.
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
STRIKE UP THE BANDS: The Cure have sold out at the Summer Sessions at the Royal Highland Centre on Sunday. You can still grab tickets for Biffy Clyro on Friday; the Heather on the Hill Festival on Saturday; and Florence and the Machine (supported by Self Esteem and Jacob Alon), Lorde, Deftones and the Prodigy next week. Tickets are also still on sale for Bon Jovi at Murrayfield on 28 August.
GET FESTIVE: With the Book Festival now underway, the Festival season is now officially in full flow. If you’re wondering where to start then we recommend Will Quinn’s Essential early picks of the Fringe and the Sandra George exhibition at the City Arts Centre Celebrating Edinburgh’s great, unheralded street photographer.
QUICK BITES
STAR GUEST: Edinburgh restaurant Solti, which specializes in Nepalese cuisine, welcomed Hollywood A-lister Florence Pugh to their Drummond Street premises in the heart of the Old Town. The Marvel star, no doubt enjoying the Festival, was pictured with restaurant staff on the restaurant’s Instagram page.
GARDEN WINS: Two local pubs have been named amongst the UK’s best for their beer gardens. Whisky cask supplier and bottler Spiritfilled analysed TripAdvisor reviews for hundreds of outlets, checking for five star reviews that mentioned “garden,” and The Balerno Inn (at number 24) and Beehive Inn (47) were the highest ranking north of the border.