Freedom Leisure to take over events at Uckfield Civic Centre

Freedom Leisure is to take on the running of events at the Uckfield Civic Centre for a trial period.

A meeting of Uckfield Town Council on Monday, February 22, agreed to proposals in a report which showed how responsibilities could be allocated. The trial period should run from September to December 2010 inclusive.

The aim is for the town council to retain running costs, staff costs, technician costs and personnel obligations. It will waive venue hire costs. All the secondary income will go to the town council along with the merchandise commission income.

Freedom Leisure will contract a minimum of three shows over a four-month period, be responsible for all show technical costs (other than technician costs), advertising and marketing, to include brochure inclusion, newspaper advertising and all the show income.

The two organisations will share ticket agencies and trouble shooting, poster and flyer distribution and be responsible for their own box office costs. Uckfield will reconcile their box office and Freedom Leisure will invoice Uckfield.

At the full council meeting councillors agreed that events had a place in the community as much as any other leisure facility provided by the council and, while accepting that many of them were subsidised, they remained concerned about the cost of organising events.

On approving the proposals to hand over the running of events to Freedom Leisure they said that a disclaimer should be added to tickets sold by the council regarding liability for cancellation.

(Added to site Friday, March 5th, 2010)