Theatre ticket booking fee set to quadruple in the new year

Freedom Leisure, which runs leisure services on behalf of Stafford Borough Council, has put forward a proposal to the authority to increase the booking fee from 50p to £2 per ticket.

There are also plans to double the charge for using shower and change facilities at Stafford and Stone leisure centres – for users not taking part in other activities in the venues – from £1.50 to £3.

Both price rises, which are due to take effect from January 1, came under fire at a full Stafford Borough Council meeting on Tuesday, where members were asked to approve the proposed fees and charges for 2020.

Opposition leader Councillor Aidan Godfrey said: “We have the panto coming up and if a young family want to go to the theatre to see it and have two adults and two children it’s an extra £8 on top of their tickets. That may be enough to put people off going.”

Councillor Angela Loughran said: “My husband and I used to take our six grandchildren to the panto – as things stand at the moment we would be paying £4 on top of that. For eight of us to go, if this goes through, we would be looking at £16 more to take our grandchildren to the panto – that’s not an insignificant amount of money.”

Councillor Ralph Cooke called for the booking fee increase to be delayed until February so that the proposal could be further scrutinised at a January committee meeting. He said: “It is a very significant increase.”

But Councillor Carolyn Trowbridge, cabinet member for leisure, said the proposal had been “discussed in depth” at the Resources Scrutiny Committee meeting held on Monday. She added that £52,000 had been invested in a system upgrade at the theatre.

She added: “Groups like the youth theatre can carry on using the facilities for free. They have brought so many new programmes into the Gatehouse Theatre and they are putting on 80 additional shows this year.

“You are standing here complaining about a rise in fees they are bringing forward instead of praising them for all the extra money they are bringing into the borough, the extra people and the extra events they are putting on.”

A report presented to both meetings revealed that the current 50p ticket booking fee at the Gatehouse was lower than that of venues such as Stoke on Trent’s Regent, Wolverhampton’s Grand and Derby Grand.

The report said: “Booking fees are an essential part of a theatre’s financial planning and commonplace across the industry. In the Gatehouse Theatre they, along with the management fee, contribute to the costs of delivering a box office service and in turn also subside the operation of the Visitor Information Services.

“In review prices across the contract it has been identified that the current booking fee applied to tickets at the Gatehouse is some way behind that of its local and regional competitors and therefore puts the financial operation of the theatre at a significant disadvantage. With increasing costs of supplies and services it is essential that charges of this nature are reviewed, compared and revised in order to continue to offer an outstanding and sustainable theatre offering at the Gatehouse.”

Councillor Gillian Pardesi called on Councillor Trowbridge to view the leisure centre shower facilities, describing conditions as “disgusting”. “They are a mess”, she added.

The meeting was told shower and change facilities remained free for customers using the centres’ gyms however.

Councillor Mike Smith, cabinet member for resources, said: “The shower and change (fee) is for people who go running at lunchtime. Unfortunately there are some people who misuse it – the charge has been levied to stop that.

“That’s the reason we never had a sauna in the new leisure centre, because the old one was misused.”