Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms upgrade halted

Published Tuesday 7 August 2007 at 16:20 by Thom Dibdin

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Plans to upgrade Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms, the George Street venue that has become a focal point of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe over the last 27 years, have been put on hold by the city council.

The scheme, the cost of which has risen from £10 to £12 million since December, has been put back to scrutiny by the new Scottish National Party/Liberal Democrat administration following complaints from Edinburgh’s four principal subsidised theatres and the company which runs the venue during the fringe. All say that there has been no consultation with them over the plans.

The capital investment involved could impinge on the King’s Theatre, according to John Stalker, chief executive of the Festival City Theatres Trust, which runs the King’s on behalf of the council. He claims that a proposed year-round programme of professional performing arts at the Assembly Rooms would have a direct effect on existing performing arts venues across the city.

“A major consultancy into the existing and future capital needs of the city’s cultural infrastructure is about to take place,” said Stalker. “We hope the consultancy will take a long hard look at the needs of the King’s and that it remains a very high priority - and we would argue, perhaps, a higher priority than the Assembly Rooms.

“We want the opportunity to make that argument and not to have it pre-empted by decisions to spend considerable amounts of money on a capital project before this consultancy has even started.”

Meanwhile, Assembly Theatres’ director William Burdett-Coutts believes that the proposals, which would see the whole of the ground floor revert to solely commercial use while the first floor facilities were upgraded, would put his operation - which runs the venue during the fringe - out of business.

However, Burdett-Coutts said he was feeling more positive about plans now that further consultation had been proposed. He added: “It is the first time in my career in Edinburgh that I have had a councillor write to me. They recognise that this landed on us and they think that there has got to be a proper consultation process.

“To be honest, I don’t want to be at odds with the council. I would like to work with them and see the building done up in a way that works for us and them. I don’t want it to turn into something that has to be a conflict and which puts us out of business. Currently, the plan as it stands does put us out of business.”

The first step of the plans was to have been a £500,000 design to achieve listed building consent for the venue which is said to be architecturally unique.

Following the representations last week the city’s Culture and Leisure convenor councillor Deidre Brock, proposed a motion to the executive that a decision in principle on the plans was put back, while “further consideration” was undertaken with the “cultural stakeholders of the city”.