Event only took £12,000 in ticket sales

The York Council has finally revealed that it lost an astonishing £187,000 on the concert that it staged at the Huntington Stadium on 4^th July.

It spent £82,000 on artists fees and £94,000 on “infrastructure costs”

An “event management fee” of £18,000 was also spent

The Council went to extraordinary lengths to try to hide the scale of the failure with several Freedom of Information requests knocked back on largely spurious grounds and others still outstanding

With Labour now having lost their majority, officials have been ordered to reveal the full figures.

The mistakes will lead to renewed calls for the Cllr Crisp – who is responsible for Leisure activities – to resign.

She had been awarded a “medal” for her work on the event.

The costs given to leading Councillors were:

Cost Heading	£’000
Artists Fees	82
Infrastructure Costs	94
Marketing	10
Event Management Fee	18
Other CYC Costs	7	Repairs, seats and Gazebos and Charity Donations
Less costs shared with Spec Hub	-5	Screen and barrier cost shared with Huntington Stadium Spec Hub.
Total Expenditure	206
Gross Income
Ticket Sales	16
Less Refunds	-2
Catering	5
Total Event Income	19
Net Cost of Concert	187

NB. The Labour Cabinet on 1^st October 2013 set a budget for the Tour de France of £1,664k, to cover the cost of the event, funded from a variety of budgets.

The outturn shows that the final cost of the event totalled £1,827k. In addition there was an up front payment of a “hosting fee”.

Links (click)

• Council refuses to reveal concert costs until after Westfield by election
• Grand Departy budget was £228,000
• Crisp blames officers for Grand Departy flop
• Grand Departy costs questioned at Council
• Poor crowd at Grand Departy
• Grand Departy heading for huge loss
• Desperate Council halves concert ticket prices
• Huntington Stadium concert doubts
• Huntington Stadium concert – licensing application
• York Council announces 10,000 capacity concert

Cllr Keith Aspden, Lib Dem Group Leader commented:

“There are serious questions to be asked as to how the council lost money on the Tour De France. The botched camping plans and the last-minute decision to hold a concert at Huntington Stadium have lost taxpayers £33,000 and £187,000 respectively.

“The Liberal Democrats argued all along that Labour needed to produce a proper public business case backed-up with detailed financial plans for these events. Instead Labour shrouded the plans in secrecy and took decisions behind-closed-doors without proper public involvement or opposition councillor scrutiny.

“Given this, it is unsurprising that these council organised events have lost money and will now worryingly hit the communities and neighbourhoods budget by £60,000.

“Despite the mistakes made by the Labour run council, I am pleased that overall the Tour De France has had a positive impact on York businesses and the wider Yorkshire economy.”