To The Finance and General Purposes Committee

Royal Town Council

Request Report from Boldmere Futures Partnership

For Funding to support the

Boldmere Community Festival for Winter 2018

Prepared for: The Finance and General Purposes Committee Meeting Date: 15th February 2018 Purpose of Report

Key Purpose This report is to request funding from the ‘Something for Everyone’ budget to support the Boldmere Community Festival event for winter 2018. The event will be held on Boldmere Road on Sunday 18th November 2018. It is aimed predominantly at the Boldmere Community, but has wide appeal from members of the Vesey Ward.

The event is community driven and will be a community celebration to herald the winter season and will take place in Boldmere in Vesey Ward foe residents and visitors from Sutton Coldfield and beyond.

Other events The event falls naturally within an annual programme of local events across Sutton Coldfield, including the Fun Run, Triathlon, Community Games, Concert in the Park and the Canley Festival. Collectively this programme of annual events helps to support and engage all members of our community.

Our events bring all ages of the community together to socialise with each other and to engage in the development of our community together. It is important that we learn from each event build on the experience to ensure that our community remains vibrant and offers something for us all.

Our community forums and Charity-run community hubs for example: Age Concern Communitea Café are focal points in our community development and are integral to our community festival from advertising to participation of all ages and abilities.

Considerations

Event Overview The event takes the form of a street market, in which a variety of local organisations, artisans and traders promote their services and sell goods, food and drink. Some fun fair attractions arrive to offer entertainment to younger members of the community.

We also encourage local arts and crafts small companies that are starting out to assist local enterprise and produce investment in our local economy as well as support our existing local business. The event has the full support of the majority of the traders in Boldmere.

Local growth is important to us to ensure opportunities for all from all ages and abilities and we will positively support the inclusion of disadvantaged local residents by ensuring that the event is fully accessible for visitors and traders alike

There is also a stage area, which has entertainment throughout the event forming a central focal point.

Again we will offer opportunities to showcase local talent

The Boldmere shops, cafes, restaurants and pubs are open as normal, although individual retailers may extend their opening hours for future Sunday events. Boldmere Traders Association are supportive and involved helping to raise the sponsorship.

Our local police team have already pledged their involvement to ensure a peaceful and enjoyable event free from any antisocial behaviour in the spirit of the community coming together to enjoy the company of each other

Attendance The event is intended to appeal to all tastes and age ranges with predominantly retail, local crafts and information aspects during the event. Live and varied local music performers also appeal to a wider community audience.

West Midlands Police estimate around 7,000 people attended last year’s summer event during the day from many of the local Sutton Coldfield communities.

A decision has been made, in consultation with the City Council Safety Advisory Group (SAG) and Karl Randall, BCC Senior Engineer that events require a road closure due to the size and number of people attending, Sundays will be the best day to have future events with minimum disruption to traffic flow and this will start in 2018. Sundays also suit the family nature of the event as with the following day being a workday, it discourages people who may attend with the intention of drinking too much, but also the date does not clash with other local events. The event is intended to compliment our already planned events in Vesey and surrounding wards in Sutton Coldfield to add to the rich mixture of community engagement in our Royal Town. Sundays are an unknown at the moment but through local community discussions we believe this will prove a very popular day.

Event Benefits The event benefits all members within our community with positive inclusion of those residents and visitors who require additional accessibility this ensures that our event does not doesn’t restrict those who have any form of disability. The event has always been run free of charge for the benefit of the community and we would like to keep it that way. It is a family focused event but open to everybody. The number of people who return every year from Boldmere, Sutton Coldfield and surrounding areas evidences its success. Boldmere has become well known for its community spirit and shopping Boulevard of mainly independent traders.

We hope that people will visit our Boldmere sited Winter Festival in Vesey Ward and Sutton Coldfield again and contribute to the local economy. Although our festival is in Vesey Ward we hope to see visitors from neighboring wards in Sutton Coldfield. We would like Boldmere to be known regionally and nationally for its Community Festivals to help promote our local community. We have a vibrant community with regular street food events and we aim to continue to develop this. We also connect members of the community together, and allow businesses and social participation organisations the opportunity to come together to create a strong sense of place

Background Boldmere Futures Partnership (BFP) is the community group coming together to promote and improve the social, cultural, economic and environmental wellbeing of the Boldmere Neighbourhood Area.

In 2017, Boldmere Traders Association asked Boldmere Futures Partnership (BFP) to take responsibility for future events. This was accepted by the Executive Committee, which has put a structure in place to support all future events. Both summer and winter events will be promoted as ‘Boldmere Community Festival’, and promoted as community events.

We will do this through organising street festivals in the summer and Winter, bringing cultural events such as the recent Big Sleuth to Boldmere, preparing a community plan and looking for opportunities to improve the environment in which we live, connecting organisations and people to create a happy and successful community. We do not charge any membership fees.

A copy of our constitution is included in the appendix. We are a not-for-profit group run solely by volunteers. We are not a charity or CIC, although we do have a vision towards one of these options.

Boldmere is a vibrant place with an incredible community spirit. Our Partnership brings together all the community groups, residents, charities, religious organisations and local traders for the benefit of the community.

We hope to move closer to greater collaboration with Sutton Coldfield Town Council.

Legislative Framework

Premises License BFP was granted a Premises Licence from in November 2017 for future events on either Saturdays or Sundays during June and November. The main shopping section of Boldmere Road will be closed for safety purposes. We are licensed to accept up to 4,999 people at any one time during an event, but we are also able to apply for our licence to be extended for additional numbers if required.

Boldmere Futures Partnership plans to run the 2018 Boldmere Community Festival on Sunday 17th November within the restriction of our Premises license which takes in Boldmere Road (our high street) from the lights at Jockey Road down to Highbridge Road and Antrobus Road junctions, with closure on the junction of Redacre Road and Gate Lane.

Safety Advisory Group (SAG) Birmingham City Council has Safety Advisory Group (SAG) who helps and support events from a safety and security perspective. The SAG is made up of all the emergency services, Environmental Health, Trading Standards, Public Transport, BCC Refuse Department, BCC Health & Safety department, National Express (for bus route changes) and the City Engineers department, plus other interested stakeholders.

Boldmere has been hailed by the SAG as a very pro-active community that heed the requests and conform to the legislative requirements, however this does constantly increase the cost of holding such events to ensure we deliver a safe event.

We are obliged to have a full Events Manual and have the following facilities and services available during the event.

1. Road Closure 2. Portable Toilets 3. Paramedics 4. DBS Registered Safeguarding and Prevent Officers 5. Qualified Health & Safety Officer 6. SIA Registered Guards 7. Full organisers communication system 8. Public Address system 9. Bus stop and route change notices 10. Additional refuse collection bins and clearance facilities 11. Anti-terrorism measures 12. Public liability insurance

In addition we also have to cover the cost of the following:

• Staging • Lighting • Transportation for stalls and gazebos • Stalls and Gazebos • Promotional activities

Financial Implications

Accounts and funding sources Our organisation is run and supported by volunteers from the community and so we receive significant free of charge service provision from those volunteers.

We do not have any source of regular income, although we have been fortunate to receive small amounts of funding from Boldmere Traders Association and Boldmere Neighbourhood Forum. Boldmere Traders Association has covered the cost of our premises license application, which was £350 and covered the cost of public liability insurance during 2017. These were paid directly by the Traders Association and so are not shown in our accounts. Boldmere Neighbourhood Forum gave us a working cash flow of £100.

We purchased a bear sculpture from Wild in Art as part of the Big Sleuth 2017. We also incurred costs to pay the artist to turn the sculpture into “Boldmere Bear”. This proved to be a very successful community project. We secured Crowd funding of £1299.55, sponsorship of £1960, general fundraising of £842.03 and a grant of £2,000.00 from Tesco Bags of Help for the educational legacy.

We received £4,830.00 of funding from Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council towards the running costs of the summer 2017 festival.

Although our bank account shows a positive balance, this is all for committed expenditure within the LIF project and the Boldmere Bear Legacy fund and so we are unable to use any of this for the festivals.

The Costs We are applying for funding for our community festival in winter 2018, which will incur both revenue costs. We have produced a 3year budget for our events through to winter 2021. We hope to make a surplus in the winter Community Festival 2018 through funding support and sponsorship fundraising, which can then be used to fund the sustainability of future community events. By securing new sponsorship opportunities we hope that the event can be funded through to summer 2020 and will also provide us with a surplus towards winter 2021. As we are a not-for-profit community organisation, any additional surplus would be used to support our local community.

Our application for £7,850.00 will support the shortfall after revenues of our event costs of £12,300. The breakdown of co-funding is 36% funded via the BFP and Traders income generation and 64% from Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council.

Our capital costs purchases from a separate funding source for summer 2018 will enable us to reduce our costs significantly in delivering the winter 2018 Festival, meaning that we are not reliant on repeated requests for grant funding. We currently rent a lot of equipment from suppliers and so by purchasing equipment, we will have it readily available to us for both summer and winter events, but also for any other smaller events we choose to put on in between. We also envisage being able to rent out equipment such as an outdoor PA system, two-way radios and gazebos to other events such as Sutton Games. Our intention would be to support other local community events by helping to reduce their costs.

Summary of Costs (See Appendix 1)

Recommendation

We believe in our local community and we want to continue to make it better for all of our residents and visitors whether it be to enjoy helping each other in each others company or to showcase local talent or to provide a community platform for aspiring business to help them along their way to success

We would respectfully recommend that Sutton Coldfield Town Council support this request, which will give us the opportunity not just to hold the Boldmere Community Festival in Vesey Ward in winter 2018, but also to be self- sustaining for the future winter events.

Contacts and Further Information

John Lymn, Chairman, Boldmere Futures Partnership [email protected]

07801 952343

Becky Clarke, Treasurer, Boldmere Futures Partnership [email protected]

07748 337 292 Budget for 2018 winter festival (MP amended)

Generated Income

Gazebo & Stall Hire £ 1,200.00 2 x Main Sponsors £ 1,000.00 Funfair £ 250.00 Caterers £ 1,000.00 Festival guide sponsorship £ 1,000.00 £ 4,450.00 Expenditure

Entertainment £ 1,250.00 Health & Safety Officer £ 575.00 Banners & Installation on lamp posts £ 1,800.00 Hire of Stage £ 650.00 Posters and Advertising £ 1,000.00 Staff to erect and disassemble stalls £ 150.00 Event Brochure Print £ 600.00 Insurance £ 325.00 Bin hire £ 300.00 Professional Refuse (BCC) £ 1,000.00 Security and First Aid £ 1,250.00 Road Closure £ 1,350.00 Toilets Hire £ 550.00 Anti-Terrorism Measures £ 1,000.00 Contingency £ 500.00

£ 12,300.00

SCTC Funding Request £ 7,850.00