A fall in ticket sales at the Floral Pavilion contributed to Wirral Council going £118,000 over budget on the seaside theatre
New Brighton’s Floral Pavilion theatre saw an unexpected drop in ticket sales towards the end of 2024(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
A Wirral theatre went over budget by £118,000 largely due to an unexpected drop in sales earlier this year.
New documents published ahead of a Wirral tourism, communities, culture, and leisure committee meeting next week show the lost income at the Floral Pavilion theatre in New Brighton contributed £96,000 to a council budget black hole of £22.5m in the last financial year which ended in March.
The Floral Pavilion has seen greater success in recent years with bigger and better shows in the hopes of competing with Liverpool’s theatres. Wirral Council is also considering turning the venue into an arts and cultural hub going forward.
However the report said the theatre had gone overbudget due to further consultancy fees to develop plans for the future of the theatre which had cost £22,000. The remainder of the £118,000 overspend was due to “lack of sales in the fourth quarter of the year.”
Much of the council’s budget overspend between April 2024 and March 2025 was in social care services for adults and children, services that make up a majority of the council’s budget.
However the new documents show the areas of the council covered by the tourism committee went over budget by £1.7m.
The local authority is still in a difficult financial position after it was forced to request a government bailout earlier this year to avoid declaring bankruptcy in March. £27.5m has been borrowed from the government, on top of a previous £12m request, and councillors are expected to prioritise the council’s financial stability above everything else going forward.
The Floral Pavilion in New Brighton saw a loss in income(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
In the new report, the council went over budget in its leisure and libraries services by nearly £1.5m. £812,000 of this was caused by “staffing pressures and a lack of budget to cover premium payments and enhancements for rota hours and repairs and maintenance costs” for leisure services.
Libraries, which are currently under review following cuts to the service, went over budget by £439,000 due to “building repairs and maintenance costs, shortfalls in income targets, which have not been adjusted despite historic site reductions, changing customer behaviour and technological shifts, and additional staffing costs, including premium payments and one-off employment related expenses.”
£104,000 of budget overspends was as a result of catering at the Williamson Art Gallery and other locations around the borough not delivering the income expected and a review will take place this year.
The museum service is also £230,000 over budget due to “legacy tramway costs that are still to be investigated, building repairs and income shortfalls due to low staffing numbers.”
The Wirral Transport Museum is currently closed and its tram tracks are currently not in use. Despite the loss of expected income, the council said improved income at its customer contact centres and Trading Standards had meant the overall overspend was better than expected.