Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
THURSDAY 15 JUNE 2000
MS GILLIAN
THOMAS OBE, MR
BRIAN BASSETT
AND MR
BEN STONEHAM
120. Given three separate distinctive lots of
regeneration in different ways, you started something in 1993/1994
in your mind, you got it collected together but by and large you
got your nod in 1995, early 1996, but they are not complete, are
they, these projects?
(Ms Thomas) We are in the process of opening. We had
a preview visit from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales yesterday.
Our car park is open, the IMAX is open. We open Explore@Bristol
on 6 July and Wildscreen@Bristol on 20 July.
121. You are fully funded?
(Ms Thomas) We still have a funding gap but we are
confident —
122. What is the funding gap?
(Ms Thomas) £2.5 million out of the £95
million at the moment.
123. Brian?
(Mr Bassett) The total project value is £43 million.
We have committed to date £30 million. We opened to the public
on 24 May, two or three weeks ago.
124. Are you more nervous that you not quite
got it, you are £13 million short?
(Mr Bassett) No, no, we are not short of £13
million.
125. You are not short?
(Mr Bassett) Our match funding gap is now just under
£2 million, so we have the vast majority of that £13
million available to commit on the third phase of the project.
It is a project that has been phased. The first phase, the second
phase and the third phase. At the end of phase two we opened to
the public, as I say, on 24 May, and phase three is going forward
to complete the £43 million project.
126. You do not have any doubts you will complete
the whole operation?
(Mr Bassett) No.
127. The Tower, are we going to get the Tower
or not?
(Mr Stoneham) Can I concentrate on the bigger part
of the project and then answer the point on the Tower. The Tower
is about a quarter to a third of our total project. It has got
all the publicity and probably helped us to win the project in
the first place. The other elements we have completed, and I will
come on to the Tower, the scheme was to open up the harbour frontage
of Portsmouth and Gosport, long occupied by the navy, and to provide
promenades and a linkage between a number of important permanent
sites. There was an injection into the heritage area in terms
of an investment to upgrade, to put new attractions into the heritage
area of Portsmouth and the dockyards. There was a new museum in
Gosport, linked, again, by the promenades on that side as part
of the regeneration on both sides of the harbour and then with
linkages across the water with water buses. The Tower was, if
you like, the symbolic element of our project from which people
will view and get an experience of the wonderful view of the 18th
Century dockyard from the air, as it were.
128. Is it a Blackpool Tower or is it a St Louis
Tower? Is it an arch or a tower?
(Mr Stoneham) No. I would not like to describe it
as a Blackpool Tower, it is a tower of the 21st Century, not the
20th Century.
129. One long pillar?
(Mr Stoneham) Yes, in that sense. Where we have made
great progress is on all the promenades and in the dockyard with
the work now continuing on Boathouse 6, and on the Gosport side
as well. All the work is under way. We are confident that it will
be completed to budget. The majority of all that work will be
completed by the end of this year and we aim to open it in the
beginning of the tourist season effectively, in April next year.
The Tower is the one element which we have had huge difficulties
with, I do not think there is any point hiding that, in the sense
that we have had two attempts to get first a developer and then
a consortium together. We are now in the midst of a final tendering
process for the Tower, our third attempt to achieve it. We are
confident that tendering process will be successful and that part
of the project will be completed in 2002.
130. Do you feel that in your communities you
represent that though this has been a challenge, probably you
have also burnt the midnight oil occasionally, that there is a
greater confidence in the community at what has been achieved
but also that the organisation committee will now go and win European
money and other trust money and now knows how to do it, as it
were? Do you think those are the two biggest benefits apart from
all the tourists who might come and the actual activities you
have got?
(Ms Thomas) I would like to say for Bristol this had
been a 55 acre derelict site for over 20 years and there had been
numerous attempts to get the urban regeneration going which had
all failed, one after the other, until the opportunity of Millennium
Commission funding came along. Now in Bristol alone there is over
a billion pounds worth of construction going in within the inner
city area. I will not say it is entirely because of the Millennium
Commission coming to fruition but certainly it has generated a
feeling of confidence that these major areas of urban dereliction
can be acted upon and can be achieved. It is very much built on
the foundations of Bristol, the things that are there, two local
educational trusts, an industry such as the BBC Natural History
Unit which was there. So there were foundations within Bristol
and what this scheme has managed to do is to create a facilitating
partnership @Bristol which has brought this to fruition and which
will be the operating body. We are confident we will go on to
develop other things around the area which remain to be completed.
(Mr Bassett) We are located in West Wales which is
a poor economic area, heavily dependent in the past on agriculture.
Certainly when I arrived at the project I think there was some
scepticism on the part of the project ever getting to where it
is now, both in terms of the local community and in terms of public
bodies within Wales. We have demonstrated that we have been able
to deliver and establish some very strong partnerships with the
public and private bodies and the regeneration effect of the project
is there to be seen within the community so the whole community
and the public bodies and private bodies are really right behind
the project.
131. It is very exciting.
(Mr Stoneham) I think the project in Portsmouth and
Gosport has helped to raise confidence, particularly on the Gosport
side where a large proportion of the work that is now nearly complete
is opening up the frontage there. In Portsmouth we have had years
of decline in the dockyards and I think people do see the project
as a symbol of regeneration and reality. One of the things that
the project has done by linking a series of developments along
the waterside is to add terrific value to those developments in
terms of the importance they will bring in terms of jobs. Because
the Millennium project is around it, and linking it, both those
developments, I am sure one of which is nearly completely and
will open in November, and one which will follow on the other
side in Gosport themselves will have greater potential in terms
of jobs and attractions for people and leisure activities than
they would have had without the linkages and the components of
investment of our Millennium project.
132. Had you not had the Millennium money none
of this would have happened, would it?
(Mr Stoneham) That is right.
Derek Wyatt: Sorry, Chairman.
Chairman: No, I am sorry to have cut
you short. On that, somebody said the other day in a newspaper
article that Mr Major as Prime Minister through instituting the
Lottery had helped to transform the face of this country. I do
not think that can be denied. Claire Ward.
Ms Ward
133. You said in the submissions to the Committee
that the project will be viable if visitor numbers are sustained
and estimates of the costs prove accurate.
(Ms Thomas) That is right.
134. Obviously we all hope that the project
is successful but what is the contingency, what is the likely
outcome, if you do not meet those targets?
(Ms Thomas) The project is focused on science, nature
and the arts and we have a wide range of appeals to a wide range
of people. Its focus is first as a visitor attraction and also
it is a fascinating educational resource. As a visitor attraction
I am entirely confident that it will well make ends meet. Our
visitor estimates are very modest. We have got about 200,000 visitors
per each of the three attractions, that is IMAX, Explore and Wildscreen.
In Bristol already the Bristol Zoo has over 400,000 visitors and
a much smaller exploratory science centre which has now closed
did attain 200,000 visitors itself. Our numbers of visitors are
relatively modest and studies of science centres in general carried
out in the United States have shown that one of the factors increasingly
on visitor numbers is the range and the variety of the facilities
that you offer, so we are confident on that score that we will
do reasonably well. The point I think I would like to make is
that the educational opportunities offered by this new range of
science and environmental centres have been very great but to
make full use of its educational opportunities, particularly for
the disadvantaged groups, that is a cost as opposed to something
which can be done on the basis of people necessarily paying to
come in, and for those sorts of activities we would not necessarily
have sufficient funding for them.
135. What surveys have all of you done about
the planned up take of your attractions, projections of people
wanting to come, and the financial basis of those figures and
the contingency planning, in the light of what we have heard this
morning relating to that rather larger project?
(Ms Thomas) We have carried out a number of studies
throughout the whole history of the project, first of all, looking
at, as I said, similar attractions, their size and capacity, the
numbers you get through compared with size and the attractions
that we have around in the area. We have found a number of specific
factors which are very interesting. For example, all attractions
within the Bristol region have a very high visiting friends and
relatives ratio compared with other ones around the country and
that is because of its unique location at the gateway to the West
Country. Many people come and stop off and go to things, even
relatively minor things, in the Bristol area before they go on
to the West Country or come back from the West Country. Further
to that, we have carried out a very detailed survey also because
we have a wide range of attractions which appeal to different
sectors of the market. We have targeted with direct mail particular
sectors of the market with particular visitor attractions in particular
kinds of ways because the marketing information nowadays available
is very detailed down to the specific portfolio you get with each
individual postal code area. We have invested money on a really
detailed marketing study at that level to be sure that compared
with some of the big projects, a relatively modest budget is very
wisely spent in order to get what we want in terms of visitor
numbers.
(Mr Bassett) At the time of the initial bid to the
Commission there were various studies undertaken before I arrived
on the scene, studies undertaken by leisure consultants. There
was also a feasibility study carried out by the Welsh Office in
terms of alternative locations for the siting of the Botanic Gardens.
Since then there have been a number of reviews of those numbers.
We have always been confident that our target visitor numbers
are realistic and achievable. That has been borne out by every
review that we have done as time has progressed. Right up until
recently when the Millennium Commission actually carried out a
business operations review with external consultants, those figures
have always been signed up to and considered achievable. We have
always been very conscious of our location, in terms of where
we are. We are in Carmarthenshire and people do have to travel
to visit the Garden. We are conscious of that, they have to make
a specific journey, or they have to be travelling past our door.
We recognise that we are not surrounded by chimney pots and that
also has been taken into account in our forecast numbers. We are
appealing to a broader market than just the special interest gardener,
if you like. The special interest groups will make the special
trip to the Garden and we are seeing them arrive now in good numbers.
We are also appealing to the education side in terms of school
trips and other educational visits, the life long learning centre
in terms of courses that we are running, but also in terms of
families that come to the site. We are an innovative botanic garden.
We are very interested in making the whole visit exciting and
interesting and a hands-on experience for children. I think if
you get children to the site and they go away having had a good
time and want to come back then you have cracked it.
(Mr Stoneham) A large element of our projects in a
sense are environmental, the construction of walkways and promenades,
and are not in that sense commercially sensitive. The three elements
are a museum at Gosport, the Explosion experience, a Boathouse
6 which is the Navy Today exhibition which has been created in
the dockyard and the Tower, which is I suppose the main commercial
risk of our project. We are very confident on the basis of the
work we have done. We have had three sets of consultants at various
stages during the project checking our figures. Certainly Boathouse
6 and the Gosport Museum can meet our projections. Gosport, because
it is part of the local authority, is guaranteed by the local
authority anyway if it does not. We have looked at the cost and
the viability of doing that to fall on the Council and they are
satisfied with that risk. The Tower has been more difficult. Any
criticism has been largely because we have been very risk averse.
We have been cautious about it. That is why we have done three
sets of consultants' work looking at the potential of it. The
last one which we have just completed is done by the same consultants
who have done the London Eye. We are confident that the projects
we have got there are workable. We can see what the level of business
is anyway coming into our area and our projects are not greatly
in excess of that.
Mr Maxton
136. You all said that without the Millennium
Commission money you would not have been able to achieve it. Do
you mean without Lottery money or specifically without Millennium
Commission money? There is a difference. Mr Stoneham, presumably
you could have gone to the Heritage Lottery Fund because it is
a project of historical significance, perhaps, and got money there
rather than from the Millennium Commission?
(Mr Stoneham) I think it would have been very time
consuming and many elements would not have been covered by heritage,
for example, as more than just a recreation of heritage schemes.
Indeed, what the Millennium money has in a sense enabled us to
do is to bring together some heritage money and match it with
the Lottery money and money from Europe and so on and enabled
an all-embracing scheme.
137. You have got money from other parts of
the Lottery as well?
(Mr Stoneham) Well, in a sense we have got it in the
dockyard, which is a heritage area. In terms of funding our scheme,
they are separate but they are contributing to elements of improvement
in the dockyard which perhaps, although not directly related,
would not have happened. For example, the sea walls at Portsmouth
where we have created the walkway as work proceeded we discovered
that the damage to the walls was much greater and we had to go
and get some additional money from one of these funds that supports
that sort of work. Inevitably on the heritage side there are sources
of money but on other elements there are not. What the Millennium
Commission money has provided, if you like, is the seed corn or
the oil to bring everything together. It is certainly so that
without it we would have had elements done probably over a much
longer time span. The Millennium Commission money enabled us to
put everything together and move much faster.
138. Has the fact that it is Millennium Commission
money and it is the Millennium put pressure on you in terms of
time? I would have thought most projects were supposed to open
this year if they got Millennium money, some of Portsmouth will
not. Generally has it put much pressure on?
(Ms Thomas) May I just answer the previous question.
I think it is very important this one. When the various sectors
of the Lottery were being set up there was a considerable amount
of discussion as to the repartition between the Millennium Commission
and the Heritage Lottery sector. The science centre funded projects
have been funded out of the Heritage Lottery sector only within
existing museums. The Science Museum, for example, as well as
others around the regions, has received money for hands-on funds,
similar to what we are doing, but only if they are in existing
institutions. That was very much the option that was taken at
that time. The only facility there has been for science and the
environment of such fundamental importance —
139. I will come back to that.
(Ms Thomas) — to the country has been within
the Millennium Commission. It must be a serious question for the
Government to re-evaluate at the moment and they are looking at
the Lottery sector and the fact that the Millennium Commission
will no longer be granting money as to where this extremely important
sector is integrated in the future. That is my answer to the first
question. The second question is, none of those are under any
pressure to open before 31 December. These are projects to celebrate
the Millennium which are there for a long time, they are future
projects. We will look back on this moment as a very special moment
when key investment in education, training, regeneration around
the country happens thanks to the Millennium and the Millennium
Commission.
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