Visitor Access and Facilities in the House of Commons

Written evidence submitted by Tour Guides Ltd (VA 05)

Introduction

We have recently learned that the Administration Committee is discussing the future of visitor facilities including guided tours, at the Palace of Westminster. We represent the London Blue Badge Guides who have guided all the public tours since 2000. For the last 12 years our professional guides have provided a service of exceptionally high quality and this year the public tours won two prestigious awards.

We regret that we were unaware of the Committee’s work as we believe we have an important and valuable contribution to make. We have noted from the Committee Minutes that our Blue Badge Guides seem to be virtually invisible in the representations made to date. As representatives of the guides who actually deliver the award winning public tours we would have hoped to have been part of the team from the Central Tours Office who have made representations to the Committee over the last few weeks but unfortunately this was not the case. Therefore our submission to the Committee is late and we apologise for this and hope you understand that we would have replied much sooner if we had only been aware that contributions from all interested parties were invited.

Below we have set out information about the many years of visitor service provided to the Palace of Westminster by our professional guides and we would like to invite members of the Committee to perhaps experience our tours first hand. These are currently every Saturday throughout the year and throughout the Summer Recess when 34 of our 180 strong team of Blue Badge Guides welcomes up to 3000 visitors per day. (On quieter Saturdays in November-February we reduce our roster to 28 guides per day). You are very welcome to see our ‘comments’ book in which visitors have shown their appreciation for the very high level of guiding they have experienced. We were delighted that Parliament won the two awards, and we trust that members of the Committee realise that these tours are 100% guided by our Blue Badge Guides.

Our 180 Blue Badge Parliament endorsed guides are freelance. Parliament is guaranteed to have 34 guides on any full day or half day for the tours. There are no issues of sickness/holiday and no insurances or other staff costs as our guides are not ‘employed’ by Parliament. They are supplied by us on a contractual basis.

The daily charge for one guide equates to 15.4 adults buying a ticket for the tour at £15 each. Our guides lead parties of up 25 people (sometimes up to 29 on very busy days) and conduct 4 tours per day, so on a busy day a guide can sometimes take 100 plus visitors on tours. This means that the cost of each guide is covered after 15.4 adults have bought the tour. There are no additional costs, other than VAT charged. As such we believe that professional Blue Badge Tourist Guides are exceptionally good value for money!

We therefore would ask members of the Administration Committee to excuse our late submission, and to kindly take the time to read the information below with a view to being fully informed on the services of the Blue Badge Guides who guided all fee paying visitors to the Palace during the last 12 years, and to understand how we play a central part in the visitor experience.

Background

Trained and qualified professional guides have been conducting tours in Parliament along the "Line of Route" (LoR) since the later 1940s when many came to see bombed out London. Firstly guides were trained, qualified and awarded a red badge by the BHTA (British Hotels and Tourism Association) and then by the BTA (British Tourist Authority). The 1969 Tourism Act devolved guide training in England to twelve regional tourist boards so the London Tourist Board (later reborn as Visit London and more recently as London & Partners) took over here and started awarding a blue badge which soon became the symbol of excellence in professional guiding. The tourist boards passed responsibility to the Institute of Tourist Guiding which, sponsored by DCMS and approved by the then DTI, was launched in Parliament in April 2002.

For just over 40 years until 1980 London Registered Tourist Guides conducted tours for UK and foreign visitors during all recesses and on Saturdays. They also conducted tours sponsored by members of both houses of Parliament and educational groups with permits from the Education Department at other times. Tours lasted 1.5-2 hours according to visitor requirements. In 1980, following the untimely death of Airey Neave M.P., public access to Parliament during recesses and Saturdays ceased due to increased security concerns. London Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guides (BBTGs) continued to conduct tours at other times as before. The London Tourist Board and subsequently the Institute of Tourist Guiding have held further training courses for BBTGs to enhance their knowledge of Parliament (see the 2011 course timetable below as an annexe) and an endorsement qualification is then awarded to guides who pass the exam. All the guides who conduct the Summer Recess and Saturday tours hold this endorsement.

TGL also tendered in 2009 for the contract to book and supervise in-house guides for members’ tours. We were informed verbally that we had been awarded this contract but, after some considerable time, we were told that the tender had been withdrawn and that the current system would continue after all.

A new public tours regime

In 1999 Grant Leisure, a company working on behalf of both houses, approached this company (TGL) to provide BBGs with the Parliament endorsement qualification for public tours to be launched in the Summer Recess of 2000. TGL won a tender and tours were conducted on a trial basis that summer and a second trial was carried out in 2001 after which Parliament made this arrangement permanent. We proposed the tour timings and guide rosters which were put into action by the newly appointed Visitor Manager and his deputy. Excellent relationships were forged with the office staff under the Visitor Manager, retail and catering personnel and with the Police and Security officers who were from the outset closely involved in facilitating visitor entry to Parliament and safe passage for the tours along the LoR. We were proud that these tours attracted very good visitor and press reviews and a series of surveys carried out confirmed a 93% success rating. Therefore TGL went on to win further tenders to provide guides for the Summer Recess tours. Many visitors compared the Blue Badge guided tours very favourably with the "freeflow" system that runs in Buckingham Palace.

However, the new tours system had the drawback that many categories of visitors who would have wanted to hire their own Blue Badge guides for bespoke tours were no longer allowed to do so and it was felt that this put additional pressure on the already heavily booked members’ tours . We understand that some M.P.s did question the concept that Parliament should charge for the tours. It was made clear that the ticket price was simply to cover the large extra security costs, the retail and catering staff and the guide fees. The more permanent arrangement led to the establishment of the Central Tours Office (CTO) headed by a new Visitor Manager. The Visitor Manager fine-tuned the established tours system, increased the number of tours offered in languages other than English and introduced Visitor Assistants to further help with ticketing and get visitors to the tour start point etc. He also established an information desk manned by BBGs in Westminster Hall and a roster of senior BBGs working as "LoR Monitors" ensuring smooth tour flow and quality control of the guide team. BBGs were praised over the next years for their linguistic competence - 7 Spanish 7 Italian 4 German and 4 French tours operate each open day and many other languages are offered ad hoc according to requirements. There was also praise for their great flexibility – the tours started from Sovereign’s Entrance in the early years and then Westminster Hall became the start point, during several Summer Openings the LoR was partially closed due to important works so diversions were put in place etc.

Public tours on Saturdays

The Summer Recess tours went from strength to strength with consistently high visitor satisfaction ratings. So much so that in 2009 there was a proposal to introduce public tours on Saturdays throughout the year. Saturday tours started in July 2010 and have also proved successful. We were delighted and proud this year that our tours have won two major awards.

The Future – tours in other recesses and Sundays ? A wider range of guided tours ?

We have been dismayed that recent publicity materials about the public tours downplay our role and even contain photos that show Visitor Assistants conducting tours. It goes without saying that TGL and the London BBG fraternity as a whole would be very happy to offer longer tours and special theme tours of the type that were regularly provided until 2000. Our training (see Institute of Tourist Guiding website www.itg.org.uk) includes art and architecture, constitution, evolution of British parliamentary democracy, how Parliament works today and therefore we see ourselves best placed and appropriately qualified to contribute to an enhanced tours programme offer. Most guides stay in the profession long term and constantly update themselves through CPD programmes. We can be booked to trial some new types of tour on an ad hoc basis. BBGs are freelance and thus Parliament will never have to think of salaries, holiday and sickness pay, pensions etc. as outlined in our introduction above.

November 2011