The Stage

Theatres Trust repeats call for £250m West End fund

Published Wednesday 29 December 2004 at 14:50 by Jeremy Austin

Theatres Trust director Peter Longman and chairman Rupert Rhymes have used the organisation’s annual report to press once again for a £250 million cash injection for West End theatres.

Writing in the publication, both praise culture secretary Tessa Jowell’s response to the call by the trust and the Society for London Theatre for government help in securing the sum of money spread over the next 15 years. Jowell set up a working party to pursue the report - entitled Act Now! - and arranged for it to meet earlier this month. Together with arts minister Estelle Morris, she would like to have moved the issue forward by the time of the General Election.

Longman wrote: “Theatre buildings need constantly to change and to adapt. Only by doing that can they expect to survive. But economics and other factors have resulted in much of what we have inherited being 100 years old, when it was only built in the expectation of a 20 year life.

“The Lottery funding building boom, which has steadily been transforming the UK’s museums and galleries over the last ten years, has largely passed our theatres by, with the result that, outside the arts council subsidised sector, the majority of theatre buildings still reflect a bygone age.”

It was in 2002 that Really Useful Theatres chief executive Andre Ptaszynski expressed concern that the West End’s theatres needed an extensive investment if they were to survive into the next century. It was later claimed that the drama houses in particular were in trouble because they did not generate enough profit to sustain that investment.

Jowell and Morris met with representatives of the London theatre industry in May and again earlier this month. Despite initial press speculation, industry experts say a solution is still a long way off.