Ty Pawb facing “annual budget pressure of £280k” without mitigation actions

Footfall at Wrexham’s art and markets facility has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels and “serious mitigations” are needed to prevent future years of financial losses.

A report due before members of the council’s employment, business and investment scrutiny committee on Wednesday highlights the pressures that inflation, the cost of living and rising energy bills have had on the building.

It shows a projected annual budget pressure of around £280k, without mitigation actions. That budgets includes the secured Arts Council Wales Investment Review Funding of £200K per annum.

Ty Pawb was also  identified as “one of the highest consumers of energy of all council buildings” in 2021/22 – despite a relatively recent multi million pound refurb using what was referred to at the time as the latest technologies and green thinking.

The bad performance is believed to be due to the concrete structure, poor insulation and the requirements for Gallery 1’s atmospheric controls.

The roof of the car park and Ty Pawb’s boiler are also seen as particular issues at the building.

The report notes that full replacement of the roof did not take place during the initial refurbishment, instead it was “effectively patched” due to budgetary reasons. One school of thought stats the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining, what was restricted budgets back then is now unprecedentedly tight public finances with huge local cuts due.

The report to councillors explains: “The cost of repairs and maintenance for the building has increased significantly in 2022-23 due to it being necessary to carry out the five Year Fixed Wiring Safety survey.

“The roof suffers in recent extremes of weather and there are several leaks that have required ongoing maintenance.

“It is five years since the initial refurbishment and as a result faults are beginning to show within the building due to its high usage level.

“The roof during the refurbishment was effectively patched, as opposed to a full new roof, for budgetary reasons. As a result, the roof requires very costly ongoing maintenance and repairs.”

In a bid to reduce the energy costs of the building a ‘carbon reduction group’ has been created in a bid to look at how reducing the carbon usage in the building.

Wrexham.com has long documented the several iterations of the business plan for the council run centre, and there appears to be another effort to tackle raising revenues with a  new separate ‘income maximisation group’ being created.

This has been set to up to achieve a ‘minimal additional income of £20,000 per annum, additionally a contribution of £15,000 per annum towards overheads will come from the Investment Review grant from 2024-25 onwards.’

Moving forward a number of “mitigating actions” have been identified to reduce the projected budget pressure.

This includes maximising the car parking income – something which has been adversely impacted by the free after 11 initiative offered by another part of Wrexham Council since the pandemic.

In the last financial year the car park income at Ty Pawb was around 44 per cent less than pre-pandemic levels.

There are also the regular ongoing issues with the car parking barrier system which have impacted car parking income.

However with charges set to be reintroduced at all council owned car parks this spring, there are hopes that car parking levels will return to a pre-pandemic level.

Other areas of focus to increase income at Ty Pawb include:

• A review of Ty Pawb’s opening hours to ‘ensure effective financial programming”
• Conduct a market rent review to ensure Tŷ Pawb remains competitive in its approach
• Identify actions to reduce the carbon footprint and associated utility costs of Ty Pawb
• Dedicate increased marketing resource to venue hire across the organisation
• Convert the Maker Space into a rentable retail unit aimed at a creative business, in order to maximise rental income and streamline services
• Introduce a tiered charging framework for the Performance space
• Increase the number of specialist fairs (record fairs, craft fairs etc), which generate more table hire revenue and significant increase in footfall

There are no real details on why many of these areas have not already been looked at prior to large budget issues looming.

There will also be an attempt to “quantify social return on investment from activities delivered within Tŷ Pawb”, perhaps to offset some of the budget pressures on wider social gain. It is unclear if this is part of a wider council policy, with other departments looking to demonstrate their own social impacts as part of a value for money argument amid budget cuts.

Despite pushing back against consultants in recent years Wrexham Council will also apply for a specific Business Development grant of up to £50k via Arts Council Wales “in order to procure specialist support in developing the financial sustainability of Ty Pawb through staff training, business remodelling and associated costs including adaptations to the building.”

Wednesday’s report also shows that since opening in 2018, Ty Pawb has welcomed over 1.3 million visitors.

However – like the wider city centre – footfall at the facility has struggled to return to its pre-pandemic levels.

For the 2022/23 financial year footfall for the building was 397,519.

This is an increase on the 280,909 in 2021/22 year, but still below the 462,579 footfall figure recorded in 2019/20.

Details are also provided of occupancy levels at Ty Pawb, which has achieved a “steady” level of approximately 85 per cent between 2018-2020.

The report states: “Post-Covid, there was initial interest in new start-up businesses, however in line with high street businesses, the smaller traders have also struggled which has had a detrimental impact on our occupancy figures within Tŷ Pawb.

“This is reflected in an income which is lower than the budget target.

“With an Interim Operations Manager in post, all processes relating to recruitment and support of traders are being reviewed.

“It is hoped this will enable market and shop occupancy income to increase for 2023/24 and onwards.”

The report also notes that Ty Pawb has “exceeded its venue hire target for 2022/23 due to continued repeat business and new clients, many of whom cite the uniqueness of Tŷ Pawb’s setting and its convenient geographical location with on-site parking as the reason for booking.”

The report will be considered and challenged by members of the employment, business and investment scrutiny committee at 10:30am on Wednesday 10 January.

Councillors will likely create their own recommendations, and might even review their historic recommendations to assess if there was any impact from their work.