Express & Star

Head of The Public breaks her silence: Why it could have stayed open

The former boss of The Public today broke her silence over the decision to turn the building into a sixth form – and revealed she had only found out herself about the plans a day before the shock announcement.

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Linda Saunders today insisted the £72 million venue was an asset for the people of Sandwell.

She also claimed that Sandwell Council could have saved £400,000 a year in the grant it gave to the centre and still keep the building open as an arts centre.

Mrs Saunders said she was angry over job losses at the centre and said staff were 'gutted' when the news was announced.

Sandwell Arts Trust handed the keys for the building back to Sandwell Council last Friday signalling the end of its responsibility for the building. It is due to be run as a sixth form by Sandwell College.

Today Mrs Saunders said staff at the £72 million centre, including herself, had only found out about the plans when they were given a draft press statement the evening before the announcement to close it was made.

The ex-managing director today hit out at the council.

Speaking exclusively to the Express & Star just a week after handing back the keys to the council, she said: "In 2009 when Sandwell Arts Trust was set up to run the project, we signed a 25-year agreement with the council.

"That had an agreement to break after two years to allow both of us to work out if The Public was a financial goer.

"The council were also supposed to do a fundamental review to see if they wanted to keep it as an arts centre.

"We got to March 2011 – the council had not done anything about making their mind up."

She said the arts trust was asked to continue running the building for another year until 2012.

"Sometime in about January or February 2012 the council said 'we still haven't make a decision, we don't know what we want to do' so could we run it for another year. Because we were committed and could still see the potential we said we would."

In February of this year Mrs Saunders said the arts trust received a letter giving The Public another year's grant – around £1.4 million – and promises of talks about the future.

However, in March the arts trust was told the council only wanted to renew the contract for three months until the end of June 'and that they would let us know their final position at the end of May,' she said.

"We always assumed we had worked as a partnership, so we continued to work with them, then suddenly in May we had a meeting with them and they said the college had put in an expression of interest to take over the building, but they also said they wanted to talk to us about a five-year plan."

She said at around 5.30pm on the evening before the announcement bosses were given a copy of the draft press release due to be released to the media the following morning about the deal.

"That is genuinely how the council told us," she said. "We were gutted because we had worked really hard through very difficult times and at that point New Square wasn't open, but we could see the potential of that. We had lots of community groups and it was making a real difference to people in Sandwell."

The council has maintained that it has pulled funding for The Public as it cannot afford the £1.6m it ploughs into it every year, but Mrs Saunders said studies have showed that amount could potentially have been cut by a quarter.

"We knew the grant could be reduced and we could see the financial position the council were in and we wanted to have that conversation that we could substantially review it," she said.

"Jones Lang LaSalle had identified we could keep it and reduce it by £400,000. We had never had a conversation about whether they wanted to keep the current business going."

Mrs Saunders today said she was particularly 'angry' about the job losses at the New Street site.

"Some really good people that I have worked with have lost their jobs."

And she said the building went so wrong as the initial project got 'lost'.

"People got sucked into the fact that you have got to have this iconic building and all this digital stuff. The Arts Council should never have got involved in terms of delivering the project, they are funders, they should have been keeping it under control.

"I think Sandwell ended up with a fabulous, world-class building and the council should be making much more now instead of destroying it."

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