IN A FRENZY of fear over the cuts they have been told to make, the IW Council is busy looking through its jewellery box and has earmarked few choice pieces of real estate to sacrifice in order to save its own castle.
Next on the list for possibly being transferred into private hands is the Guildhall in Newport, but it is the Botanic Gardens in Ventnor that is on the agenda this coming week and a decision is apparently going to be made about its future next Tuesday (October 12).
Also Shanklin Fire Station is earmarked for closure in the near future and the adjoining Police Station is also likely to close, leaving a prime piece of real estate in the centre of Shanklin that Fire Chief Paul Street has not denied might be sold off.
In a move to perhaps take the spotlight off of the Botanic Garden’s sneaky leasing (as it was part funded by lottery money it cannot be sold), the Council has let slip that the Guildhall might be next on the list. The subject of the ‘business transformation’ of some Council buildings came up in a scrutiny meeting on Wednesday September 29, and suggestions were made as to those that might be shut down and leased or sold off.
At some stage it was suggested that the Council meetings and the Committee Services could possibly move into the Guildhall. But that was completely discounted as the building is apparently ‘not fit for purpose’ - a report has outlined load-bearing problems with the floor. But the Council is likely to favour the route of putting the building up for sale or rent according to sources, especially as it is a Grade II listed building and will therefore require specialist and expensive repairs.
However if the floor and structural problems could be addressed other suggestions have been mooted that the museum below could be moved upstairs and the ground floor could become a lovely central location for civil wedding ceremonies.
The Botanic Garden building in Ventnor has just been granted a licence for the holding of civil wedding ceremonies, but strangely for a council-owned building the fee for the registrars to conduct a wedding is not the same as the £43.50 formerly charged at Northwood House (before it shut last weekend) but the £310 charged for them to attend a private venue. This lower figure will also be the fee for the unsuitable room at the Planning Offices, which holds four guests, that is to be provided in place of the 43 capacity room that was used at Northwood House.
Those who have been following the developments at the Botanic Gardens are wondering when the decision to put the building into private hands was made. The application for a civil ceremony licence was made in ????
The IW Council recently awarded a 10-year catering contract to the Royal Hotel in Ventnor.
“This centres around the provision of catering services on the site, but will also offer the opportunity for joint marketing and the development of an enhanced tourism and hospitality offer at the Garden,” reads the delegated decision report enigmatically.
“The most recent failure of the lift has had a measurable negative impact on the Royal Garden Café and has undermined the contract’s first year’s trading success,” added the report whilst recommending approval of the £220,000 expenditure needed to repair the ill-fated lift.
But people are asking why the council intends to pay this large amount of money to repair the lift when they intend to lease the building to a private concern
Although Ventnor Botanic Garden was not in the forward plan written by the Council and therefore the decision to possibly put it into private hands was not circulated to council members, George Brown has said that he will make a decision this Tuesday. At a reception at the Quay Arts last Saturday David Pugh confirmed to the Gazette that putting the Garden and the building into private hands was a possibility.
Public feeling is so strong about the possible sale or leasing of Ventnor Botanic Garden that an online Facebook pressure group was formed last week and it already has nearly 3,000 members.
“In the hands of private investors it will need to make a profit and is likely that it will cease to become a community facility. This will inevitably reduce the service, impact the quality of the botanic collections and reduce staff levels to the detriment of the skill and knowledge of the workforce who curate, develop and maintain an internationally renowned plant collection,” says the online support group.
“The garden will be removed from the public domain and a valuable community and educational asset may well be no longer available to the neediest in our society.
“The garden costs the IW Council £300,000 per annum (or just £2 per year for every person who lives on the island). In the face of the spending review, this saving to the Authority is tiny, but the impact to the community will be massive. The removal or two or three senior managers (at the IW Council) would make the same level of saving with little or no impact to the community or the garden. In private hands, there will most definitely be an entrance fee. The national average charge to visit a botanic garden is £10 per person.
“The garden is a major tourist attraction that brings hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. All of these visitors add immeasurably to the whole economy of the Isle of Wight. Anything that threatens the quality of the garden will inevitably have a profound affect on the tourist industry and will in turn, impoverish tourism spend on the Island.
“If you feel strongly about this potential erosion of community facilities and reduction of service to our society, fill in the questionnaire on the Botanic Gardens website at http://www.botanic.co.uk/contact_us
“The botanic garden is OURS - once it is gone, we will never have it back.”
The Fire Station and Police Station at Shanklin will be without tenants if the closure of the fire station is put into effect, as has also been discussed by the Council in conjunction with the Fire Service.
Plans were in the pipeline to build a new Bay Area fire station at Lake and phase out the stations in Sandown and Shanklin but now Shanklin Fire Station is due to close.
