Tuesday 19th March 2024,
North Yorks Enquirer

Tuesday 18th October: Futurist D-Day?

The fate of the Futurist Theatre will be decided on Tuesday 18th October. That is the latest information from Scarborough Borough Council’s Forward Plan. It appears the decision will be made at the Cabinet meeting.

42 of 50 councillors will be excluded from the multi-million pound decision. The fate of the Foreshore Road theatre appears to lie in the hands of six Tories and two Independents.

The two Independents are Bill Chatt (Woodlands) and Mike Cockerill (Filey), a closet Tory who lost his County Council seat after receiving a good shoeing from UKIP’s Sam Cross in Filey.

The decision to exclude the majority of councillors from voting on the Futurist is bizarre. Decisions over the value of £140,000 are exclusively the domain of the Full Council, according to Article 13 of SBC’s Constitution.

How will the council exclude the majority of councillors from an important multi-million pound decision? The decision, which affects the taxpayers of Scarborough, Whitby and Filey, needs to be carefully scrutinised. From the outset it doesn’t appear to be legal. Or perhaps SBC has made another mistake and the ‘key decision’ will recommend the demolition to Full Council.

Tory donors Flamingo Land and Gordon Gibb will be most interested in the decision. They are set to purchase the Foreshore Road site for around £1million. Scarborough, Whitby and Filey taxpayers are set to pour in millions of pounds. The money will raze the Futurist Theatre to the ground and shore up the cliffs.

Futurist On Theatres Trust At Risk Register

On Monday the Theatre’s Trust revealed their 10th Annual List of UK theatres which are most at risk. Yet again Scarborough’s Futurist Theatre, closed by SBC in January 2014, makes the list.

The Theatre’s Trust invited campaign groups from around the country to submit videos highlighting their work. The videos were released on the Theatres Trust YouTube Channel. Scarborough’s Save The Futurist Campaign Group have produced a video, which is embedded in this article.

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