VII. SUMMARY
OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
119. Our principal conclusions and recommendations
are as follows:
(i) This Committee has no wish to resile
from its previous support for the Dome (paragraph 2).
(ii) We consider the sharing of best practice
to have been beneficial both to the capital projects and to the
Millennium Commission. We recommend that the Government consider
ways to ensure that the increased expertise in project management
that has resulted is not dissipated when the Millennium Commission
concludes its work (paragraph 18).
(iii) There was clearly a demand for regeneration
in many of the areas of the country that received funding for
a major project and there have been regeneration benefits in the
case of some projects. However, it is too early to tell whether
all the major projects will prove to be as effective as hoped
in both meeting local need and in serving as effective catalysts
for regeneration. We welcome the Millennium Commission's decision
to commission a study into the economic impact of its major capital
projects. We recommend that in due course that examination should
be expanded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to
consider the wider need for and regenerative and employment impact
of cultural and sporting capital projects (paragraph 21).
(iv) The Secretary of State may be right
in expecting demand for visitor attractions to increase in future,
but the supply of visitor attractions is increasing more rapidly.
This is having and will have consequences for existing visitor
attractions that have not benefited from Lottery support; those
consequences do not appear to have been systematically considered
by the Millennium Commission or government, past or present. It
will also have consequences for the long-term future of the projects
themselves (paragraph 28).
(v) We received suggestions that the Commission's
life might be extended or a successor body put in place to provide
continuing support for capital projects or to fund comparable
projects such as science centres, which might not be funded by
other Lottery distributing bodies. We do not consider that to
be an appropriate course of action. However, we recommend that
the Department for Culture, Media and Sport set out in its response
to this Report its strategy for responding to demands for additional
funding by Millennium Commission's capital projects after the
Commission's resources from the National Lottery have been spent
and the Commission has been wound up (paragraph 30).
(vi) The Company's unusual hybrid structure
led to the absence of a clear line of responsibility for overseeing
the project (paragraph 39).
(vii) From the start, in 1996, the separation
between politicians and what became NMEC was never clearly established
by either Government, which affected perceptions of the Millennium
Dome as a visitor attraction. It has also meant that we have found
it exceptionally difficult to disentangle the responsibilities
of the various parties involved in the Millennium Experience.
This may perhaps have been one of the intentions of those involved,
but it must also be acknowledged that political involvement was
integral to the project from its very inception (paragraph 43).
(viii) With the benefit of hindsight it
is evident to some of those involved and to this Committee that
the project lacked enough involvement by those with sufficient
experience of commercial visitor attractions. The evidence that
we received in November 1997 from Mr Keith Bales was far-sighted
and demonstrated that the weakness was foreseen and therefore
foreseeable. In spite of constant reassurances both from Ministers
and the Board themselves that they were safely in control of the
project and suitably qualified to run the project successfully,
the Board of NMEC failed to recognise that different skills were
required for the construction and operational phases of the project
and to plan ahead to ensure a smooth transition between these
phases. For too long, the Dome was perceived as a public monument
more than a visitor attraction, but it was the latter element
that would ultimately determine its success or failure (paragraph
51).
(ix) The Millennium Dome was from its inception
a high-risk project. However, it is now apparent that the urgency
of ensuring the completion of the building of the Dome on time
led to an as yet unquantifiable overspend and subsequent severe
financial problems (paragraph 54).
(x) We commend everyone concerned in ensuring
that the Dome won its race against time and in particular the
former Chief Executive of NMEC, Ms Jennie Page, who made the single
greatest contribution to that achievement (paragraph 54).
(xi) The fact that the Jubilee Line Extension
opened only just in time is a demonstration of the validity of
our concerns about transport. Furthermore, the obduracy of London
Transport until very late in the day in rejecting our proposals
for a scheduled bus route was unjustified. We are concerned that
even now visitor numbers may be affected adversely by London Transport's
failure to direct visitors adequately to the Dome from its stations
(paragraph 59).
(xii) During all of our previous inquiries
on the subject, NMEC repeated the mantra that the project was
"on time and on budget". The first part of that claim
has proved justified; the second is more open to question (paragraph
60).
(xiii) The Comptroller and Auditor General
has already agreed that the National Audit Office will undertake
a full audit of the circumstances surrounding the most recent
grant made to NMEC. We recommend that he should broaden that enquiry
to look at the Dome's accounts to date, in their entirety, in
preparation for a full examination of those accounts by the Committee
of Public Accounts (paragraph 66).
(xiv) A balanced assessment of the Dome
as a public project should give due weight to the growing signs
of its success as a regeneration project, particularly as that
regeneration potential of the project was from the outset of crucial
importance in the selection of the site and organisation of the
project (paragraph 71).
(xv) We have observed the pleasure that
the Dome's contents give children. However, it must be recognised
that some of the original ambitions for the Dome's contents have
not been realised. Taken as a whole, the Dome's content is interesting
and rewarding, but rarely inspiring. The content lacks a sense
of cohesion; it is more of a patchwork. There is no single element
to make the visitor gasp in astonishment—to provide the
"wow" factor that was originally sought (paragraph 82).
(xvi) We were impressed by the performance
of Paisley's Our Town Story and the energy and enthusiasm that
the Our Town Story had fired in all those involved. This Committee
continues that support for the Our Town Story initiative first
stated in Not Only the Dome and has been impressed by the
number of children who have had the opportunity to perform in
the Dome (paragraph 84).
(xvii) We still do not know who decided
the various visitor forecast figures, who changed them, or why.
However, ultimate responsibility must lie with the Board of NMEC
and successive shareholders. The fluctuations in the visitor forecasts
from more than 15 million to 10 million, up to 12 million and
back down to 10 and finally 6 million seems to have been made
without proper regard to the immense financial implications those
changes entailed. It appears that NMEC, the Millennium Commission
and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport accepted the over-optimistic
opinion polls without considering the underlying assumptions or
exploring a new methodology on which to base those crucial figures
(paragraph 95).
(xviii) NMEC is confident that it will not
have to return to the Millennium Commission for more funds. However,
there are no guarantees, and therefore if the current business
plan does not balance and insolvency becomes a prospect then the
tax payer may face a bill larger than the cost of the Millennium
Commission making further grants from the National Lottery (paragraph
101).
(xix) There is still a lack of clarity as
to how much of the Lottery money so far received by NMEC is loan
and how much grant. Originally the total sum was to be £538
million, but that has now been revised to £525 million. Just
how much will be repaid? (paragraph 102).
(xx) The Company did not place a sufficient
emphasis on marketing before the Dome opened and was unduly reliant
on free coverage in the press. That approach proved to be disastrous
when the press coverage became largely hostile (paragraph 107).
(xxi) Mr Smith's statement that NMEC's Annual
Report contained "a reasonable stab" at the Company's
expected income from the Dome's sale is an unusual way of describing
a business plan which has had to be rewritten so many times (paragraph
115).
(xxii) We regard it as essential that English
Partnerships will be beneficiaries of the sale of the Dome to
the extent originally envisaged (paragraph 117).
(xxiii) The Dome's future has been a fundamental
issue since our first inquiry. The permanence of that future has
been held up as a justification for the entire project. The timing
of the announcement of the decision has rendered it impossible
for this Committee to give full consideration to the implications
of that decision in this Report. We consider it imperative, however,
that the following four issues should be clarified:
· the overall level of the payment
by the successful bidder and the timetable for payment.
· the division of proceeds from the
sale and the rationale for that division.
· any circumstances relating to the
Government share of ongoing revenue and how such revenue would
be determined and who would benefit from it.
· any conditions attached to the disposal
of the Dome and the related site that will guarantee the preservation
of the Dome at Greenwich as an enduring symbol of the United Kingdom
at the turn of the Millennium (paragraph 118).
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