Brighton & Hove's REGENCY Magazine » Labour Party

The Old Market: Financial History

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:09:12 +0000

Repeatedly over the last decade, The Old Market Arts Centre Trustees, unable or unwilling to service or repay a very large historic debt, have looked beyond its profitable trading position for rescue funding.

At the beginning of this year, in a change of tack, Trustees submitted the first of two planning application attempts which sought to build two large glass penthouses on top of the historic Grade II listed Old Market building in Hove. Approval of this plan would have set a dangerous precedent giving carte blanche to anyone to make unusual changes to listed structures just on the basis of ‘needing the money’. The first application was refused and in September the revised application was also refused. Tellingly, planning committee Member, Cllr Paul Steedman, stated that he was not convinced by the claimed financial need.

In the wake of these refusals, a petition seeking grant support from the council is now being introduced before every event by Old Market manager and trustee Stephen Neiman. He explains that the Old Market does not receive any funding from the council, nor from the Arts Council. He readily admits the Trust covers the cost of its operations, but says it is unable to clear its “historic debt”. An electronic petition (lodged on the council’s website) states that the requests for funding “have been met continually by both organisations stating that although they are supportive of the arts and community use of the building, they cannot support a project with such a capital deficit.”

Superficially it appears to be a reasonable request for some financial assistance – but is it all it seems? Prospective signatories are given the impression that neither the Arts Council nor the council have ever donated a penny. Even Delia Forester, ex-Labour councillor and ex-deputy chair of planning, takes as read this supposed lack of public funding in her letter of support for the two glass penthouses.

It is in fact an ungrateful slur on both organisations. In 1999 The National Lottery (through the Arts Council) donated £1 million to the Old Market Trust – at the time, the largest donation to an arts project in the South East. Furthermore the only significant condition was that there would be a clawback should the Old Market be sold within a 10 year timeframe. Those 10 years expired on 11th March 2009 – around the time the Old Market Trustees registered the planning application for the glass penthouses.

In 1998 the Labour administration provided the Old Market Trust with a loan of £275,000, to be repaid in 10 equal instalments. In 2001 that debt was deferred to 2006. Further funding   came in the form of a £585,000 grant from the  Single Regeneration Partnership, administered through Brighton & Hove City Council.

The Labour-run administration, in which Delia Forester was a key player, went even further in 2004. Council finance officers Catherine Vaughan and Peter Sargent presented a report to councillors recommending that the loan should be converted to a grant. Their reasoning was that should the Old Market Trust become insolvent Brighton and Hove City Council would be unlikely to retrieve the £275,000, and as they had already distributed the money to the Trust it would “have no additional financial impact on the council”. The report concluded that “The council therefore has no financial gain from pursuing repayment of the loan”. Spurious logic, but the report was approved, and the unpaid debt wiped out.

These actions helped to significantly reduce the “historic debt” to just over £1 million. In 2007, local businessman, Jonathan Bigg, entered into an agreement with the Old Market Trust to take 250-year leases on areas within the Old Market building with the intention of sub-letting them as office space. For this he paid the Trust £1 million, a sum he maintains Stephen Neiman and the Trustees assured him would clear their debt. Having given the money, he then learned that the Trust intended to build two glass penthouses above the areas he had just leased. When he discovered that their motivation behind the glass penthouse plan was again to clear this debt, he was told that his £1 million had made no impact on the debt and that the Trust remained in exactly the same position as before. He asks – quite reasonably – “where has the money gone?”

With stories floating around about late payments to staff it seems at least one person is sitting pretty in all this and that is the Old Market’s artistic director, Ms. Caroline Brown. In 2005 Ms. Brown took home £32,500, and in the following year £35,000. In 2007, supposedly at a time of intense financial pressure due to the Old Market debts, her salary rose sharply to £60,535, coupled with expense claims of £17,500. In fact Ms. Brown’s salary makes up a large chunk of total outgoings on salaries. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that Ms. Caroline Brown is actually Mrs. Caroline Neiman, the wife of Old Market manager and trustee Stephen Neiman.

It seems a shame that the Old Market could close its doors soon – it is undoubtedly a superb and successful venue marred by the seemingly poor financial decisions of its trustees. We invite readers to form their own conclusions.

The Old Market: A Tangle of Conflicting Loyalties and Remits

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:02:40 +0000

Just after World War II the bulldozer and developers threat to Brunswick Square and Terrace architecture led to the formation of The Regency Society. Over the years it grew to be the premier Conservation voice in Brighton and Hove, the respectable Club to be seen to be joining & the trusted repository of bequeathed collections, such as the James Gray photographic archive.
Hierarchically, it has reigned over all the others. The Hove Civic Society and The Brighton Society each had their respected status, but even they have been subservient in terms of status to the very Grand and very respected Regency Society. The pecking order then takes in all the other groups like the Kemp Town Society, The Kingscliffe Society and the myriad local area resident & amenity groups and overtly campaigning ones such as my own saveHOVE and the Marina area’s more recently formed Save Brighton.

But the Regency Society was the leader of the pack, attracting serious expertise to its ruling Committee. In recent years this has come to mean attracting expertise with unattractive agendas. Predatory developers, architects and politicians, looking to serve their own interests by standing for and being elected to positions on the ruling Committee, have increased the danger of a diluted or abandoned conservation remit.

How could the members of the Regency Society have allowed people like that to gain major positions of power on their Committee, neutralising the credibility of The Regency Society as a conservation voice! By next AGM it will just be an asset-rich club, protecting and advancing the careers of architects, politicians and developers.

For most Regency Society members (other groups work in a similar fashion), membership has been all about the tea and biscuits, the wine and chamber music in the Royal Pavilion at AGM, the garden party, the lectures, the coach trips and the £60 dinners. There is little interest or involvement with boring old planning.

For the committed conservationist, however, membership has been about protecting heritage, Grades 1 and 2 Listed buildings, the Regency era Brunswick Townscape (mostly listed buildings) and the cultural story of this nation along the thread of time. Architecture is certainly High Art to the Starchitects of our time and for me, these areas of listed buildings merit the term “Artscape”.
“My turn! My turn!” the Horribles shrill, bug-eyed, teeth bared, fame and wealth on their minds. They want these buildings “euthanized” and see ambitions thwarted by their taking up space THEY could be using. “Get off the stage! My turn! My turn!” And the cultural markers that tell the visitor what country they are in, what town, city or village they are in are just so-much “brown field site” to them.

In recent years leading members of the various conservation-agenda groups have “intermarried” so to speak. They have propped up each other’s dwindling memberships by joining each other’s groups. They have aged and died. They have not been replaced with new members possessed of their deep respect, wish to learn and understandings of history and heritage, their educational strengths and grit in defending the riches of heritage this country so proudly shows off to the tourism trade. The dwindling numbers of them desperately prop up each other’s conservation remits and become haunted by the dilution and marginalisation of conservation. Social memberships and the brazen infiltration by predators for whom conservation is optional has bred deep despair. And a lot of empty hand-wringing.

At the time of the Old Market’s February planning application to put 2 glass box penthouses on the roof of the Grade 2 Listed Old Market, the convenor of the Regency Society’s planning group was former Labour councillor, Delia Forester, a woman who used her position on the planning committee on March 23rd, 2007 to provide fulsome support for the Frank Gehry colossus on Hove seafront. She led the majority Labour Party vote which gave it planning permission.

How did someone like that become convenor of the planning group at the Regency Society? A weak constitution helped allow it. The supine, tea & biscuits credulous membership voted her (and others) onto the ruling committee and thence to the planning group, the credibility of the Regency Society being of no concern to them.
How was it right that the Chair of the Regency Society was also an Old Market Trustee? How is it right that the Treasurer of the Regency Society, Stephen Neiman, is also the Old Market Trustee raising this glass boxes planning application? Should he not have resigned from the Regency Society to do that? Entanglements and loyalties so deep that you can barely see the join have meant that the move by the Old Market Trust to put big glass boxes on its Grade 2 Listed roof compromised the Regency Society’s conservation remit. Or did it?

Ahead of the 2009 Regency Society AGM, and using her Brighton University email account instead of Regency Society letterhead , Delia Forester, convenor of the Regency Society planning group, Labour politician & architect, registered fulsome planning consultation support on behalf of the Regency Society. Nervous breakdowns, angst and hysteria ensued when this became known. Loyalty to Stephen Neiman, however, led to old stagers staying their hands and not objecting as they would otherwise have done and then getting in a state about it. Remit vs. Loyalty to a close & valued colleague and mate.

Why did she (with others in commanding positions in The Regency Society) do all this? Why not start their own group? Why destroy the Regency Society’s remit and credibility? How was it even possible to do so? Putting on a military hat, I would say that taking out the leader is the best way to topple the rest. And so it came to pass.
Over at the Hove Civic Society, conflicts of loyalty, angst, rage and shattered alliances tested their commitment to conservation to its limit. One of its two members on the Council’s Conservation Advisory Group resigned over this one application. The Hove Civic prevaricated, vascillated, hung back but finally moved to a position of objection – but with blood on the floor.

This story was repeated all over the shop.

At the Regency Society AGM, regime change led to the new Chairman withdrawing Forester’s Regency Society response to the Old Market application for the two glass penthouses, declaring to the Council that because the Society was divided, there would be no response. No response to an application affecting a listed Regency building in a massively listed Regency townscape. The infiltrators had done their job and taken out the conservation movement’s leader group.

Embarrassed and mortified, torn between hurting Old Market Trustee and applicant, Stephen Neiman, or hurting the listed building, the amenity groups were like chickens trapped in the coop with a fox. Only the 11th hour intervention of the London-based Georgian Group sobered everyone up.

The Old Market is saved from glass boxes for the moment. But now the time for reckoning has come. And it is clear that the Regency Society membership will not make the effort to defend the conservation remit by learning anything other than who will be playing what at the next AGM chamber concert. It is clear too that, unlike the Brighton Society, which allows anyone to be a member, but bars politicians, developers and architects from Committee membership, the Regency Society has failed to write a Constitution which protects itself from destruction of its remit & respectable purpose.

Handbags At Dawn

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:50:22 +0000

Last month local Labour MP Celia Barlow (she of the “high lustre” shower head billed to the British taxpayer) was all set to star as guest of honour at the opening of a new branch of Boots – what glamourous lives these MPs live – and had the great honour of cutting the ribbon. The people flocked to the new chemists in er … single figures, but guest of honour Ms. Barlow was nowhere to be seen … and no phone call. After 30 minutes of waiting local Tory councillor Dawn Barnett stepped in, cut the ribbon and the festivities commenced. When the bedraggled Ms. Barlow finally arrived, assembled residents were forced to endure the entire ribbon cutting ceremony again after Ms. Barlow was informed that it was a Tory councillor who had already cut the ribbon. If looks could have killed ….

Conservatives Pick Pavilion Candidate

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:46:46 +0000

Brighton Tories were out in force for Sussex’s first selection of a Conservative candidate by the general public as opposed to the usual local political party group meeting. It seems however that the majority of the public stayed at home. It probably didn’t help that the published email address bounced back and the telephone number wasn’t always answered, according to residents that we spoke to. The winning candidate was Charlotte Vere from London who will wrestle (literally I hope) Caroline Lucas (Green) and Nancy Platts (Labour) for the Pavilion seat. Oh, and there’ll probably be a Lib Dem thrown in too.

Communal Bins Overflow

REGENCY — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:14:43 +0000

I cannot claim to be surprised by the stacking up of refuse around the communal bins all over the centre of the city. Councillor Gill Mitchell, who was Labour chair of the environment committee which forced through these refuse changes several years ago, Councillor Geoffrey Theobald, the current Tory cabinet member for the environment, and CityClean assistant director Gillian Marston have all at one time or another categorically assured residents that such an overspill scenario could never occur. They argued that the communal bin collection truck only required one driver, and so this person would be easy to replace should a problem arise.

The sight and smell of the overflowing bins is truly disgusting and a serious health hazard – some residents have already spotted rats amongst the torn sacks. Let us not forget that many communal bins are sited directly outside people’s homes. What I find truly amazing is the dire management decisions taken by CityClean. Whilst the filth has been piling up around the communal bins over the past few days CityClean caged trucks could been seen driving around the central area, but only collecting the waste from litter bins. Would it not be more intelligent to task these workers with collecting the hundreds of strewn sacks around the communal bins? One would have thought that would be common sense.

Perhaps it is time for CityClean and our council to follow the lead of Jersey Council who disposed of communal bins as a failed and costly experiment. Furthermore with the lower ranks of the CityClean workforce threatened with massive pay cuts it might be more appropriate for our city council to dock the over-inflated salaries of CityClean management, who have clearly demonstrated their hopeless lack of competence and propensity for creating city-wide problems.

Some good news is that the strike has been delayed by 28 days, apparently after the personal intervention of the new chief executive, John Barradell. We shall have to wait and see if they can hammer out a long-term solution.

Letters: Gill Mitchell Is A Moaner

REGENCY — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:53:25 +0000

If prizes were issued for hypocrisy, then surely Gill Mitchell, leader of the Labour group of councillors, would win the contest by a mile.

In The Argus (26th August) she has the gall to suggest the seven top officers are each receiving in excess of £100,000. I might agree that these sums do seem somewhat excessive, if it weren’t for the fact that it was the previous Labour administration, in which she held high office, that bumped up the salaries to their present level in the first place.

It seems Mrs. Mitchell is at her happiest when moaning about the present administration, be it the cost of repairing the bandstand here or the state of the seafront railings and Madeira Drive there, conveniently forgetting that her party had more than twenty years in which to arrest this shocking decline.

The dereliction of our city is a direct result of Labour’s dereliction of duty – a dereliction which cost most Labour councillors their jobs at the last elections, and whilst the Tories are not perfect, at least they are restoring some of the city’s pride.

If you can’t say anything positive Gill, please stop talking our city down.

Nigel Furness 
Cambridge Road

Lost Labour’s Love

REGENCY — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:55:41 +0000

Your humble editor is feeling most lovelorn at the moment. A personally addressed missive from the local Labour party describing how our great leader is saving the world, one penny at a time, were delivered around Valentine’s Day to all my neighbours in the area … but I was conspicuously excluded. What have I done to offend them?

Welcome To The Future

REGENCY — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:51:44 +0000

Japan’s bullet train move aside – Brighton is on-track to be the envy of civilised world. You’ve seen the press reports, heard the endless quotes from councillors including Gill Mitchell and Geoffrey Theobald, been deluged by the articles and press releases from the city council offices, but what is the mysterious “Rapid Transport System” they keep hyping actually all about?

The Rapid Transport System is a fascinating union of forward-thinking and cutting- edge 21st century technology. It consists of a modular transport device which moves by means petroleum-fuelled propulsion system which in turn drives a set of four rounded units constructed of space-age rubber, two of which can be controlled by the Rapid Transport System’s control wheel (similar in some ways to an old-fashioned ship’s wheel) and used to change its direction mid-journey.

REGENCY magazine’s editor, Tony Davenport, was lucky enough to have a trip on the Rapid Transport System.
“When I was a boy this was the sort of thing you just read about in science fiction comics – I never thought I would see such a thing in my lifetime, let alone have a chance to ride in one.” Tony told us. “I stepped on in the town centre, and within about 23 minutes I was at the Marina. Prior to the multi-million pound investment by Brighton and Hove Council such a journey would have taken a full 2 minutes longer. Thanks to this boost from the taxpayer soon everyone will have the chance to ride on this.”

Smelling salts were offered to disembarking passengers for whom the speed and excitement had proven too much.

Communal Bins Overflow