T Y N W A L D C O U R T O F F I C I A L R E P O R T R E C O R T Y S O I K O I L Q U A I Y L T I N V A A L P R O C E E D I N G S D A A L T Y N S T A N D I N G C O M M I T T E E O F T Y N W A L D O N E N V I R O N M E N T A N D I N F R A S T R U C T U R E P O L I C Y R E V I E W B I N G V E A Y N T I N V A A L M Y C H I O N E A A S C R U T A G H E Y P O L A S E E Y N E R C O O I S H Y N C H Y M M Y L T A G H T A S B U N – T R O G G A L Y S DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY, CULTURE AND LEISURE HANSARD Douglas, Wednesday, 13th February 2013 PP34/13 EIPRC-C, No. 1/12-13 All published Official Reports can be found on the Tynwald website www.tynwald.org.im/Official Papers/Hansards/Please select a year: Published by the Office of the Clerk of Tynwald, Legislative Buildings, Finch Road, Douglas, Isle of Man, IM1 3PW. © High Court of Tynwald, 2013 TYNWALD STANDING COMMITTEE, WEDNESDAY, 13th FEBRUARY 2013 Members Present: Chairman: Mr D M W Butt MLC Mr A F Downie OBE MLC Mr Z Hall MHK Clerk: Mrs E M Lambden Business Transacted Page Procedural ..................................................................................................................................... Evidence of Hon. G D Cregeen MHK, Minister for Community Culture and Leisure and Mr N Black, Chief Executive, Department of Community, Culture and Leisure ...................... The Committee adjourned at 11.54 a.m. ________________________________________________________________ 2 EIPRC-C/12-13 TYNWALD STANDING COMMITTEE, WEDNESDAY, 13th FEBRUARY 2013 Standing Committee of Tynwald on Environment and Infrastructure Policy Review Department of Community, Culture and Leisure The Committee sat in public at 10.30 a.m. in the Legislative Council Chamber, Legislative Buildings, Douglas [MR BUTT in the Chair] Procedural The Chairman (Mr D M W Butt MLC): Welcome everybody. This is a meeting of the Environment and Infrastructure Policy Review Committee and we have today with us, Mr Nick Black, Chief Executive of the Department of Community, Culture and Leisure and we have Mr 5 Graham Cregeen, Minister for the same Department. I am Mr Dudley Butt MLC and I chair the Committee. With me is Mr Alex Downie MLC and Mr Zac Hall MHK and our Clerk is Marie Lambden. Could you please ensure that your mobile phones are switched off, not just on silent, because it will interfere with Hansard if they are not. For the purposes of Hansard again, we shall try to 10 ensure that only one person speaks at a time, if that is possible. Thank you. The Environment and Infrastructure Policy Review Committee is one of three Standing Committees of Tynwald Court established in October 2011 with a wide scrutiny remit. We cover three Departments: the Department of Community, Culture and Leisure, who are here today; the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture; and the Department of Infrastructure. Today’s 15 session is the second of our routine scrutiny sessions with those Departments. We met with the Department of Food and Agriculture in June, the Department of Infrastructure in November and today we are meeting with the Department of Community, Culture and Leisure. 20 EVIDENCE OF HON. G D CREGEEN MHK AND MR N BLACK Q1. The Chairman: So welcome, gentlemen. Can I ask you both to introduce yourselves and then… Could I start, perhaps, with the Minister first: could you introduce yourself and give us a 25 brief overview of how you think the Department has been operating in the last few months? The Minister for Community, Culture and Leisure (Mr Cregeen): I am Graham Cregeen, Minister for the Department of Community, Culture and Leisure and with me we have Nick Black, Chief Executive. 30 If we start off with a few key points of what the Department is up to. The Department owns things like the Camera Obscura and we have got the Wildlife Park, the Villa Marina, the Gaiety, the NSC, we run regional sports pitches, we support the regional swimming pools and we are sponsoring Department for Manx National Heritage, the Heritage Foundation. We have also got the OFT and Manx Radio, so we are the sponsoring bodies for those. 35 The purpose is to support visitor economy, create a quality life and support communities via sports and arts development. This costs – 2013-14 Budget, if approved – about £17.5 million gross expenditure, but the gross expenditure, sorry, is £25.9 million. Salary, loan charges, pool grants make up 110.4% of the net budget from the start of the year. Sometimes referred to as loss-making, current position is subsidised, some activities make real 40 profit and those that are targeted to break even, do so. Bus operations are heavily subsidised to provide economic infrastructure and allow social inclusion. About 60% of passengers do not pay. Without subsidy we would only run a number of routes that would be viable routes, so there are about five routes that would only be viable, if you had to pay for everything without any subsidy. ________________________________________________________________ 3 EIPRC-C/12-13 TYNWALD STANDING COMMITTEE, WEDNESDAY, 13th FEBRUARY 2013 Rail operation costs about £2.75 million, but generates an economic value of around £11 45 million to the Isle of Man – 10% of all tourist income alone and 25% when linked with Manx National Heritage joint activity. Much has been done to reduce costs: Villa Marina, Gaiety Theatre down from £1.35 million to below £930,000 next year. Well published things are staffing changes, involving redundancies and removal from Whitley Council and imposed changes in terms and conditions. 50 Income also up. Despite the poor summer weather on record, the Curraghs Wildlife Park has welcomed over 40,000 visitors, the highest for over six years. Operating in a commercial environment, we strive to increase revenue. However, our primary focus is to enhance the quality of life for people on the Island. Unlike many areas of Government, the Department’s income relies almost totally on discretionary spend by customers in a price sensitive environment and without 55 the protection from the broader economic climate. The small size of the Island and its population reduce the profit potential, making many of our services unattractive to private sector ownership. To continue to drive Department services and facilities at the current level and quality, subsidies are a necessity. However, limit to what can be done by trimming costs, budgets have in real terms fallen by 60 8.1% since 2010-11, costs have gone up. Currently spending 2.7 per annum on energy, for example, for savings… Other savings are harder. Articulated buses would give us an approximate saving of £300,000, but there would be a capital saving of about £3 million on replacement fleet. The Chairman: We will come to those issues later on. I am just getting an overview of how 65 you think the Department has worked in the last – The Minister: So that is some of the things that we are looking at. We are also looking at the Agenda for Change. Our Department is one of the leading Departments to put forward areas of the Scope of Government. We are looking at the Villa 70 Marina, Gaiety, Wildlife Park, how we can make these things more attractive and to try and get within our budget. So currently we are spread quite thinly because our budgets have been hit massively over the last few years and from somebody who only came into the Department from July last year, there are very few bodies around to try and progress the situation. 75 Q2. The Chairman: Thank you, Minister. Could I start off with the good news? I will try to give some good news first. Manx sport and recreation: I have some knowledge of what they are trying to achieve with the community, with disabled and disadvantaged people and some of the referral schemes they do. I wonder if Mr Black could give us an overview for the Committee’s benefit of the schemes that they are doing, 80 particularly the referral schemes they are undertaking at the moment and what they do for the wider community? Mr Black: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I will be very pleased to do that. As you say, it is one of those areas of the Department that is realistically all good news. We 85 spend what I believe is a very small amount of money on Manx sport and recreation as a team, more formally known as the Sports Development Unit of the Department, and that costs us around £450,000 a year, including all the salaries. In terms of the benefit you might want to be interested in three particular areas. Obviously, Chairman, you referred to your own example, but with your role in Health as well, you will know 90 there is an overall link with health and particularly there, perhaps, their drive to ensure that exercise and health are maximised in a view that I am sure is designed to cut down the long-term cost of the health service of treating people once they have become ill.