Chrimbo Tatfest Options

[blackdog]

The staff cost for supporting one charter market day is £250, so it's valid to assume the same cost for a day of the chrimbo market, so if you're outraged by that outrageous administration cost you really need to direct your indignation at the town council, not me.

In what conceivabe way is it valid to compare a year round function of the council with a one off hire charge for use of the park? Your figure is simply absurd.

[Biker1]

The whole of Christmas these days is a "Tatfest" so why don't we join / cash in on the event?

[Simon Kirby]

Isn't the 'support cost' being out-sourced?

What's that, the charter market support costs? Difficult to say. The out-sourced market management fee doubled a couple of years ago to £12,000, but the council's total staff bill didn't fall. With a bit of effort you can pull the staff costs out of the published service costs, but those costs aren't allocated to the services with any thoroughness so all you can really say with confidence is that the council's total staff bill is around £350k and they spend another £650k on contract services and overheads to deliver the parks and green-spaces grounds maintenance contract and a few other bits and bobs like the charter market and allotments, and however you cast it for any individual service, the overall efficiency is lamentably poor.

£25,000 staff costs were allocated to the charter market a couple of years ago, and that had been pretty constant for a number of years, but I haven't analysed the figures for the last two years and the council may well have rearranged the deckchairs to defend whatever service they felt was most exposed to criticism, but overall nothing changed.

[Simon Kirby]

In what conceivabe way is it valid to compare a year round function of the council with a one off hire charge for use of the park? Your figure is simply absurd.

Au contraire Julian, my figure is objectively justified, it's your indignation which is absurd.

[Andy Capp]

What's that, the charter market support costs?

No; the Crimbo market. I would have thought the cost would be the approval process then the post-market inspection?

[Simon Kirby]

No; the Crimbo market. I would have thought the cost would be the approval process then the evacuation inspection?

I see what you mean. Yes, the tatfest shouldn't impose very much administrative burden on the town council at all, but then neither should the charter market which is itself independently run and managed, but the town councils' business model is to develop every service, event, or incident as a pretext for administration, and there's no way that our town council is going to just let this thing happen without wanting a piece of it.

[blackdog]

Au contraire Julian, my figure is objectively justified, it's your indignation which is absurd.

Julian? You're as wrong there as in your patently absurd figure.

[Andy Capp]

Julian? You're as wrong there as in your patently absurd figure.

I think he might be being ironic.

[Cognosco]

In what conceivabe way is it valid to compare a year round function of the council with a one off hire charge for use of the park? Your figure is simply absurd.

Yes but from past experiences tell me what project the council has got involved in that has not gone, I will be polite here,not quite as planned and has ended up costing precept payers considerably more than original projections?

[On the edge]

What gets me is the lack of imagination and poverty of ideas. Winchester has a Chistmas Fair, so we should have one, Reading has two flagpoles, so we need another, Abingdon has a Splashpad so we have to have one. Can't we do anything to be a bit different; that could help make Newbury special?

Even then, we are lead to believe the Council has access to leading business leaders via the BID. Really? In some ways, I'd hope not. What successful business would try a new seasonal format; find it fail, then roll exactly same thing out year on year on year?

Is this really the outlook for Newbury; a low cost dormitory town akin to the cheaper chain stores retailing cheap imitations of premium products in clinical surroundings?

[Simon Kirby]

Yes but from past experiences tell me what project the council has got involved in that has not gone, I will be polite here,not quite as planned and has ended up costing precept payers considerably more than original projections?

Quite so. Our town council does have quite a nack of mismanaging the simplest of situations.

[blackdog]

Yes but from past experiences tell me what project the council has got involved in that has not gone, I will be polite here,not quite as planned and has ended up costing precept payers considerably more than original projections?

All the cuncil is doing ls charging a rent for the use of the park - they have no involvement in the project apart from that. They have no other involvement to charge admin costs to. Sure it will probably cost a ludicrous part of the £6k rent to pay for a solicitor to draw up the rental agreement and some admin charges to pay for the time NTC staff spend negotiating etc. I don't suppose there will be much of a profit, but this is not another council market with endless costs - £250 a day is an absurd estimate.

[Cognosco]

All the cuncil is doing ls charging a rent for the use of the park - they have no involvement in the project apart from that. They have no other involvement to charge admin costs to. Sure it will probably cost a ludicrous part of the £6k rent to pay for a solicitor to draw up the rental agreement and some admin charges to pay for the time NTC staff spend negotiating etc. I don't suppose there will be much of a profit, but this is not another council market with endless costs - £250 a day is an absurd estimate.

Then the obvious question must be asked why is there no profit being made?
Why subsidise a private company that wants to run a Chrimbo Tatfest? Times are hard and services are being slashed so why not recoup some extra monies from a private company? Our local authorities are not shy in making money from parking etc. or does it mean that private companies are exempt from paying the going rates for facilities provided by precept payers..........after all it would appear that the stall holders, from past comments, are not too shy in charging exorbitant prices for the tat on sale?

[blackdog]

Then the obvious question must be asked why is there no profit being made?
Why subsidise a private company that wants to run a Chrimbo Tatfest? Times are hard and services are being slashed so why not recoup some extra monies from a private company? Our local authorities are not shy in making money from parking etc. or does it mean that private companies are exempt from paying the going rates for facilities provided by precept payers..........after all it would appear that the stall holders, from past comments, are not too shy in charging exorbitant prices for the tat on sale?

NTC is not in business to make a profit, but it does have a role in promoting Newbury business and making Newbury a nicer place to live. Some might consider a Christmas market contributes to thiese aims (not me, but many seem to like this sort of thing). So enabling the event to take place by allowing it to use the park in a way that does not cost the council any money doesn't seem too unreasonable to me.

[Cognosco]

NTC is not in business to make a profit, but it does have a role in promoting Newbury business and making Newbury a nicer place to live. Some might consider a Christmas market contributes to thiese aims (not me, but many seem to like this sort of thing). So enabling the event to take place by allowing it to use the park in a way that does not cost the council any money doesn't seem too unreasonable to me.

So is the NWN Headline "Council to earn £6000 from Christmas Festival" completely wrong?
Why should it be that a private company can make a profit from utilising Council Facilities but the Council cannot make a profit from private Companies to aid precept payers?

I was given the understanding that the BID was set up to promote Newbury Business to take the burden from precept payers or that was the explanation that was touted at the time if I recall correctly?

[Simon Kirby]

All the cuncil is doing ls charging a rent for the use of the park - they have no involvement in the project apart from that. They have no other involvement to charge admin costs to. Sure it will probably cost a ludicrous part of the £6k rent to pay for a solicitor to draw up the rental agreement and some admin charges to pay for the time NTC staff spend negotiating etc. I don't suppose there will be much of a profit, but this is not another council market with endless costs - £250 a day is an absurd estimate.

Sure, I hear your vehemence, but can I appeal to reason for a minute?

Take the charter market which as I'm sure you are aware is managed by a contractor, yet the town council still account for some £25k of direct staff costs to manage a twice-weekly market of independent stall holders. I mean really, am I missing something? There's virtually nothing at all for the council to do. It's not like the council service team staff are providing some kind of personal shopper service for the discerning Newbury denizens who needs a hand choosing the right kind of hoover bag.

How do you suppose the town council manage to run up a £360k staff bill - there's almost nothing at all for them to do. They have £350k of grounds maintenance contracts to run and that's it, that's a part-time job at best. The Council milk every opportunity for the maximum drama and chaos, because that's the only way they can look busy, and they are not going to pass up the opportunity to milk the tatfest for every erg of busy-work - and unless you can make a plausible argument for why not, then the council's administration cost of the already-managed charter market is a good measure of the extra work that the council will be booking.

[nerc]

Simon, i think you will find that the weekly market is managed by an employee of the town council and therefore is a part of the built in staffing costs.

[nerc]

Simon, i think you will find that the weekly market is managed by an employee of the town council and therefore is a part of the built in staffing costs.

[Simon Kirby]

Simon, i think you will find that the weekly market is managed by an employee of the town council and therefore is a part of the built in staffing costs.

Always happy to atccept I'm wrong, but I believe the income & expenditure account show Mr. Brind's managemt fee as a running cost, not a staff cost, and that there are staff costs in addition to that management fee. Like I say, it's a couple of years since I last scrutinised the accounts. Have I got that wrong?

[blackdog]

Sure, I hear your vehemence, but can I appeal to reason for a minute?

It's what I have been trying to do throughout this debate.

Take the charter market which as I'm sure you are aware is managed by a contractor, yet the town council still account for some £25k of direct staff costs to manage a twice-weekly market of independent stall holders. I mean really, am I missing something? There's virtually nothing at all for the council to do. It's not like the council service team staff are providing some kind of personal shopper service for the discerning Newbury denizens who needs a hand choosing the right kind of hoover bag.

How do you suppose the town council manage to run up a £360k staff bill - there's almost nothing at all for them to do. They have £350k of grounds maintenance contracts to run and that's it, that's a part-time job at best. The Council milk every opportunity for the maximum drama and chaos, because that's the only way they can look busy, and they are not going to pass up the opportunity to milk the tatfest for every erg of busy-work - and unless you can make a plausible argument for why not, then the council's administration cost of the already-managed charter market is a good measure of the extra work that the council will be booking.

You are taking NTCs historic method of atrributing admin costs to a twice weekly market and extrapolating that they will do a similar attribution of admin costs to a one off hire of part of the park. It's comparing eggs and oranges.

The other point is that their annual admin costs are pretty much fixed - staff salaries, insurances, the usual office expenses, etc. They will already have this accounted for within their budget, everyone will have the appropriate cost codes to put in their timesheets (or whatever), the overheads rate will be fixed. So they have no extra hours to book to the Christmas Market - they have no need to pad it out.