15th March 2013 Jerwood taker the p**s and hikes up its prices by 50% More >>
9th September 2011 "Jerwood's Power paid for by you" Costs Hastings Taxpayers £20,000 a month More >>
15th July 2011 Councillors misled over true annual cost of Jerwood to Council Tax payers (£200,000) More >>
28th November 2010 Independent view "Art isn't the real enemy in the new battle of Hastings" More >>
26th November 2010 Car parking changes ‘will hit economy’ More >>
17th September 2010 Council scraps move to make art gallery free, Jerwood on 'nice little earner'  More >>
13th June 2010 Council sends coaches in wrong direction More >>
16th April 2010 - Council blunder costs taxpayer £20,000 More >>
22nd February 2010 - Foreshore Trust agrees land swap More >>
15th January 2010 - Foreshore Trust applies for land swap More >>
9th December 2009 - Hastings Borough Council grants planning permission. More>>
19th November 2009 - Minister visits Hastings - she's 'avin a larff' More>>
20th October 2009 - New planning application lodged. More >>
4th August 2009 - Planning Application quashed. More >>
Hastings Observer - Two online polls against Jerwood More >>

In an attempt to increase visitor numbers Jerwood hikes up the cost of admission. Don't forget that the original idea was that admission would be FREE and the 'gallery' would attract huge crowds which in turn would regenerate Hastings.
On the other hand it could be viewed that the 'gallery' is actually self-indulgent bunker for a Leichtenstein-based investment in 'art' and as such they don't really want visitors even if funded by the council tax payers of Hastings.

A gallery spokesman said: “Jerwood Gallery has recently reviewed its pricing structure.
As part of this review, we have made some changes which we hope will encourage repeat visits, bolstering tourism for Hastings more broadly, and helping us to fulfil our ambition of becoming a cultural hub. More like an elitist hub.

Residents of Hastings borough will continue to receive a great value offer: a discount of £5 off full-price adult tickets. Explain please, admission was going to be free. Jerwood could of course have provided an admission price of £1,000,000 for Martians, then locals would get a massive £999,997 discount on that!!

We are additionally offering a free return visit within 12 months to all those purchasing full-price adult, child and family tickets. - so no discount for the very folk that are providing the subsidy and should be getting in free anyway.

We have frozen the prices of all annual memberships for the year.

We have responded to visitor feedback and extended our free ‘First Tuesdays’, from 4pm to 8pm on the first Tuesday of every month, to include all visitors, both local and national. WOW!

Jerwood Gallery is a not-for-profit company, operating without public revenue subsidy. So how would you describe the arrangement letting them off nearly £100,000 in business rates every year.

See Hastings Observer report

Cllr. Locke is very good with his prediction but it is not a stick we wish to beat HBC with, but some simple facts. 

If you look at the attached a copy of the Deed of Covenant between the site owner HBC and Gallerium Enterprise, the tenant, you will see that it is written into the 99 year lease of which the deed forms a part, that the gallery operation will not be charged local rates – Page 3 – Recitals - C. It is also interesting to note the very careful wording by some clever lawyers employed by someone – Page 4 – Business Rates. They don’t have to apply for rate relief, they have it by right as per the signed and legal documents. 

In a response to a question from SOS, HBC estimated that the rate relief was worth approximately £60-70K per year at current values, not the £13-18K mentioned in your news item, unless of course Cllr. Lock was being ‘clever’ with the truth and only referring to a pro rata charge on the basis that Gallerium are only notionally liable from when the gallery open to the public – whenever that might eventually be? - and of course the ongoing (for the next 99 years anyway) annual loss of £130,000 is also to be addressed.

The Jerwood Foundation is neither the leaseholder nor the operating company of the Jerwood Gallery. The tenant is the Gallerium Enterprise organisation is a Liechtenstein registered entity – see the lease and the covenant go to clause 4.26 in the lease document. We wonder when the operator will try and wriggle out of this undertaking, like the original undertaking of free entry for all.  Cllr. Lock does seem to be trying to mislead the public, either deliberately or due to lack of understanding of the real situation – and after all, it was he that threw down the gauntlet remember.

SOS Secretary Alan Smith has contacted Cllrs. Lock and Finch with verification that £200,000 will be lost to Hastings EVERY YEAR and has not yet receive a reply from either of them.

Text of cutting above: Council agree over £100k in rate relief

SPORTS clubs, charities and community groups are being let off council rates - with the local authority happy to forgo more than a £100,000 in annual payments.
Hastings Borough Council agreed on Monday to grant discounts to more than 100 organisations in a bid to help alleviate financial pressures.
These included St Michael's Hospice, Opera South East, The Parchment Trust, Hastings United Football Club, Hastings Arts Forum and Freedom Leisure, which runs the town's leisure centres for the council.
Some bids proved unsuccessful, with Sussex Coast College Hastings denied the rate break, which would have cost the council £84,110 across its two campuses.
Narconon drug rehabilitation centre was also turned down, this time because the authority could
find no evidence that its work' helped the local community. The same was said of a bid by
the World Squash Federation, which is based here in Hastings.
It was also confirmed that the controversial Jerwood Gallery; set to open later this year, would likely to be granted a rate relief of between £13,000 and £18,000 every 12 months when the
foundation behind it submits a formal application in the coming weeks. Councillors agreed the
discounts unanimously; although cUr Matthew Lock said he was worried the relief likely to be offered to Jerwood would be used as a stick to beat the council with. He said: "I am concerned
that the people who are against what we are trying to do with Jerwood are going to jump on this as a negative rather than a positive."
While his Conservative colleague cUr Peter Finch said the authority should be encouraging any sports club asking for a relief to work towards Sport England's Club Mark accreditation.
And he said that in future' the council should ask to see the accounts of sports clubs before offering the relief."If clubs are making profit through their bar," he said,"then charity should begin at home."If a club is making thousands in profit then that clearly needs addressing when reviewing who we offer relief to."

JERWOOD’S POWER PAID FOR BY YOU

A ROW over land ownership is costing taxpayers up to £20,000 a month.
Legal red tape surrounding the development of The Stade and the Jerwood Gallery means the electricity supply to the new café and Stade Hall is running from two generators. And a third will shortly be needed to power the gallery.
The dispute, which has already cost taxpayers almost £100,000 so far, centres around who owns a 'strip of land, around three square metres in size, where an empty electricity substation is based.
When completed this should provide power to the whole Stade development but UK Power Networks refuses to put in any of its equipmentj until legal difficulties have been resolved, Kevin Boorman, marketing and communications head for Hastings Borough Council (HBC), said.
One angry resident said: "It's a scandal as it has cost the taxpayers, so far, tens of thousands of pounds and someone needs to be accountable for what has gone wrong."The disputed piece of land is part-owned by the council and the Foreshore Trust, a charity that was set up in 1893 to run the whole of the town's seafront.
But HBC has been acting as trustee for the charity since January, effectively making the authority outright owners of the strip of land, Mr Boorman told the Observer. A building was also constructed in July last year to house the substation on the piece of land. But Mr Boorman fears that if the legal- wrangle is not resolved soon this could be knocked down and relocated elsewhere, potentially costing a further £60,000 from the council's coffers. The red tape also means that a fourth generator will be needed to power The Stade Open Space for next weekend's Seafood and Wine Festival, costing up to an extra £1,500 for the two days.The first of the diesel-powered generators arrived in March and the second in May. The third one is imminent.
MrBoorman said: "This money is all coming from the ratepayers. It's a nightmare and we are really not happy about having to pay out all this money  We still do not have any idea when this will be sorted out, are very concerned and trying our best to resolve this as quickly as possible by pressing lawyers for UK Power Networks for a speedy resolution."It is costing taxpayers up to £5,000 a week. "Even when the legal difficulties are sorted out it could take another three months for UK Power Networks to install its equipment, costing us another £60,000 Niamh Arnett, spokesmanfor UK Power Networks, said: "We are working closely with HBC to provide a new power supply to the Stade development in Marine Parade, which will be safe and reliable for the future. "Our legal team is investigating complicated land ownership issues and we will continue to work with the council to resolve these issues so that the work can proceed."

28th November 2010 Independent view "Art isn't the real enemy in the new battle of Hastings"

But more than that, it's about the high-risk strategy of pinning hopes for renewed prosperity on one grand project. Like every depressed town in Britain, near or far from the coast, government investment in housing, jobs and public services is the only real way to build a sustainable future.

28th November 2010 Car parking changes ‘will hit economy' - article in the Hastings Observer

LANGUAGE schools have accused the council of putting the town’s moneyspinning foreign students business at risk with new parking changes.

Many were unhappy when the Stade coach park was shut as part of the Jerwood Gallery redevelopment, and coaches redirected to parking bays in Falaise Road.

Jackie Milton, who runs a language school in the Old Town, was furious. She said: “I don’t need to remind people that the student business is one of the biggest forms of income for Hastings, so why does the council continue to make it difficult for them?

“We will end up losing business to other towns who are willing to ensure that coaches can park in the evenings, and not have to hunt around for parking and drivers having to worry about their times. 

17th September 2010 Council scraps move to make art gallery free, Jerwood on 'nice little earner'

THE JERWOOD Gallery will be allowed to charge for admission after councillors threw out a move to make it free.

Kevin Boorman explained that Jerwood had to charge if it was to claim back the VAT costs on the initial building costs, estimated to be £700,000. He said: "We have taken advice which in a nutshell says the business plan does not stack up if Jerwood cannot claim back the VAT costs."
Cllr Jeremy Birch said that the admission fee was nominal compared with £9 for a Hastings
United ticket, or £12 for a recent concert he attended in St-Mary-in-the-Castle. "Even if I had gone to the pub it would have cost me £3 for one drink. I cannot accept that only the rich can go if it costs £2," he said.

Our own calculations come up with a different scenario. Perhaps HBC would like to comment?

Read and learn from the masters. How to be rich and avoid UK taxes. 

Let’s arbitrarily split the Jerwood claimed 150,000 visitors per year into 50,000 locals at £2.00 per head and 100,000 non locals at £5.00 per head. 

£2.00 x 50K = £100K including VAT or £83,333.00 less VAT - £16,666.00 VAT content

£5.00 x 100K = £500,000.00 including VAT or £416,666.00 less VAT - £83,334 VAT content

That’s £100,000.00 VAT content per year, which ignoring other VATable Jerwood sales would equal the claimed £600,000 VAT bill on the construction costs over 6 years – all this assumes VAT at the new rate of 20% applying next year.

Jerwood will of course have generated income, after deduction of VAT, of £500K per year in admission charges alone, or £3 million over the same 6 year period. They would have to be paying some unusually high salaries to their proposed small number of staff if they are a not for profit operation; plenty left over for routine maintenance and utility bills. They don’t have to pay local taxes of course, estimated to be worth around £70K per year to them. We would say Jerwood were onto a nice little earner. Oh yes, and the other little ‘gift’ from HBC was the free site, worth at the very minimum £500K. 

At the root of all this is not the principle of charging admission but the deliberate misleading of HBC and the local population. Collectively, We think we’ve all be conned. The council agreed to the lease, they could have stipulated free admission for locals, a free season ticket for locals or anything they liked but no, they just rolled over and caved in, and we, the Hastings council tax payers will be subsidising a tax-haven based 'foundation' for the next 99 years. Nice work if you can get it!

Council blunder costs taxpayer £20,000
A council blunder over the Jerwood plans has cost the taxpayer more than £20,000.
The original application for the redevelopment of the Stade had to be withdrawn after a legal challenge from a local resident.

He claimed Hastings Borough Council (HBC) officers had not addressed traffic concerns around the site and the council decided to submit a new application, approved in December.

The High Court ordered the council pay all the legal fees – revealed this week as £20,679.

Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "It is despicable that such huge legal fees have arisen because the council was incompetent when it drew up the initial plans."

Paddy Stephenson, of Whittlewood Close, St Leonards, who has fought a long-running campaign against council planners, was also amazed at the amount.

"How many more times will the taxpayer have to fork out hard-earned money when planning officers make mistakes?" she said.

"If this occurred within the private sector those responsible would receive their marching orders. In the case of the council, a rap on the knuckles will probably suffice.

"If planning personnel are not up to the job they are paid to do, they should be removed before we are faced with further costs," she added.
The amount came to a light thanks to a question posted on the council website.

Kevin Boorman, who oversees the Jerwood project, said the council did its best to keep the costs down.

"I am obviously disappointed it has cost us £20,000 and I would have preferred to spend the money in other ways," he said.

"We chose not to fight the challenge in court and did all we could to contain the legal costs.

"I would make the point that this was a technical challenge over a procedural point and that the application was again agreed unanimously when it was re-submitted in December."

Mr Boorman refused to be drawn on whether anyone had been disciplined over the bungled first application. But he said: "When anyone takes any successful action against us we review our procedures and there are always lessons to be learned."

The Taxpayers' Alliance called on HBC to find savings elsewhere in the project to make up for the legal bill.

15th January 2010 - Foreshore Trust applies for land swap.

9th December 2009 - Hastings Borough Council grants planning permission.

In order to reach an unbiased result SOS requested that the application be heard by a councillors who had not not sat on the original board (you wouldn't want the same jury if a case was being re-heard in court would you, and planning boards are quasi-judicial) Unsurprisingly consent was granted, Cllr Daniel even trotted out the same inane remark "you wouldn't demolish an art gallery to build a car park would you" - time will tell.

The decision to re-use what was pretty much the original planning board is in direct contravention of Hastings Borough Council's own planning protocol where it states;-

“17. Members shall not participate in the consideration of a planning application if to do so would give the appearance of bias. The test for bias is: “Would the fair-minded observer, knowing the background, consider that there was a real possibility of bias?” It is not the Member’s view of whether they are biased that is relevant here but the view of the independent observer. Perception is important and can lead to judicial challenge in the High Court.”

paragraphs 15, 16 and 23 are also relevant

The complete protocol is here or can be found on HBC's website

19 November 2009 Government minister gives thumbs-up to Jerwood plans (as reported in the Hastings Observer by Richard Gladstone).
Ms Hodge compared the Jerwood to the Business Design Centre (built in 1861 as the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington and known locally as "The Aggie".

To set the record straight

At the previous exhibition, the HBC survey forms were not prominently displayed and indeed SOS were not even aware of them until early afternoon at the Saturday exhibition. When we became aware of them we asked people signing our petitions outside if they had filled in the survey forms inside. The universal response was essentially 'what form?'. From this we concluded that only those members of the public who were clearly in support of the combined proposals were being directed to the forms. When we asked people to return to the exhibition, having told them where the forms were, or to ask for one, many of them declined as it was something of a fight to get back inside - anyone who was there will remember that it was very busy indeed that day.

For those reasons, at the recent exhibition we took the initiative and brought some of the HBC forms outside so that if members of the public had not filled one in already, they could do so outside - it's called customer service! Interestingly, and as with the previous exhibition, most of those we asked while they were signing our petitions responded 'what form?'

Whilst an unknown proportion of those signing our SOS petitions and HBC forms outside had not, at that point, visited the exhibition, by HBC's own admission the plans were essentially unchanged. They already knew what was on offer from before and were still opposed to the plans, as before.

We should also point out that we had a few pro Jerwood people complete the HBC forms outside and we can assure you that we put all of their forms in the ballot box as well.

20th October 2009 - New planning application lodged. Planning web site is here, Application No. for the 'Gallery' is HS/FA/09/00576 rest of the site is HS/FA/09/00577. You can object online by following the links on the planning pages. Missing from the file is the draft lease, it was up there briefly then removed - we have a copy here

Online Polls conducted by the Hastings Observer asked the question "Are you pleased that the Jerwood Gallery plans have been approved" - 79% of respondents said "No". Earlier the Observer asked "Are you backing the Jerwood Gallery on the Stade?" - 72% of respondents said "No".

The minutes of a meeting of  the Management Committee of the Hastings  Old  Town  Residents  Association (HOTRA) held 3/6/09 reveals 132 paid-up members - not that they were ever asked if they supported the gallery. We already know that 82% of the fishermen are against it, that the Old Town Traders are against it, that there were 487 signatures on three petitions against it, so who is actually in favour?

Since Sea Space, the 'regeneration quango' became involved in Hastings the town has worstened by a further seven places in the Index of Multiple Deprivation - At its height Hastings & St Leonards ranked with the most fashionable of Victorian resorts and the local economy prospered through the first half of the 20th century. From such heights Hastings’ fortunes declined and it is now England’s second most deprived resort town after Blackpool and one of the most deprived areas in the South East region. The Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2007 shows that the Borough of Hastings is the 31st most deprived Local Authority out of 374 LAs in England. This position has worsened by seven places since the IMD 2004 moving it from within the 20 percent most deprived in England to within the 10 percent most deprived. para 2.3 page 7, Stade Impacts Assessment

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