Wrexham Council set to halve its financial support for City of Culture bid

Funding for Wrexham’s City of Culture 2029 bid is to be halved as the council continues to try and balance its budget.

The local authority had allocated £500,000 to support a charitable company that is being established to take on the bid to host the major cultural event in five years time.

The UK City of Culture competition is run by the UK Government’s Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport every four years.

In 2022 Wrexham narrowly missed out to Bradford its is bid to host the 2025 event.

Two months ago councillors backed setting up an external ‘arms length’ charitable company to help drive forward Wrexham’s bid to host the 2029 event.

The organisation will initially be known as Wrexham Community and Culture Trust or Ymddiriedolaeth Cymunedol a Diwylliannol Wrecsam, before being given a more “public-facing name”

Speaking in December 2023 Cllr Hugh Jones, lead member for environment, said the decision had been taken to set up an external company based on comments received in relation to the previous bid.

However with Wrexham Council having to find millions of pounds worth of budget cuts, the amount of support it will provide financially to the trust will be reduced to £250,000.

At a media brief on Tuesday (13 February) Wrexham.com asked Leader of Wrexham Council, Cllr Mark Pritchard whether the cut in funding is sabotaging the bid before its even begun, with confidence in the delivery of the overall culture project being part of the judgement process.

Cllr Pritchard said: “We have had lots of conversations with our partners and the lead member Cllr Hugh Jones – all of us agreed that we’d reduce it by 50 per cent, because of the difficulties that we’re in.

“I think we’ll have another conversation at the start of the next financial year on what funding we put into that pot.

“I do believe that our partners are okay with the cut in the funding.

“It isn’t just the City of Culture. We’ve looked at all our partners and we’ll continue to look at every area.

“I don’t know what political decision will be made next year and the year after with regards funding for the City of Culture.

“I think that’s a decision we’ll make next year in another financial process.”

The cut is one of several being proposed to events and regeneration across the county borough.

Wrexham Council has proposed a 20 per cent cut to its events budget and and the council are “surrendering” its ‘marketing’ budget’.

As part of the ongoing cuts the local authority  is also set to scrap its city centre warden service and review six vacant posts within the economy department.