Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations in the capital return a profit

At this morning’s Culture and Sport Committee councillors heard that a profit share would be paid to the city of just under £29,000 from the two festivals at Christmas and Hogmanay.

Ticket sales at Edinburgh’s Christmas were up by 40% over the previous year and the number of visitors in St Andrew Square and Princes Street increased from 2.6m to 3.6m.  A range of  discounts was made available to locals with the EH postcode area and may have accounted for some of the improved figures.

[tweet_box design=”default”]Hogmanay had its most successful year for seven years with all events selling out in advance. 64% of the street party audience at Hogmanay comes from outside Scotland. Tickets for this year’s Hogmanay event were bought by people from 70 countries. [/tweet_box]

While it is clearly a positive outcome financially, the three year contract awarded to a consortium of Unique Events and Underbelly was worth just under £4m when it was entered into in 2013/14 so we asked Councillor Richard Lewis the city’s Culture Convener and Festivals Champion if he considered that a satisfactory return:

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The Green Group had lodged an amendment to the committee asking that the council also took into account the policing costs of £107,000 which was completely unbudgeted and unprecedented and which was paid out of the council’s Corporate Governance purse. (See below for the text of the report and the amendment which was adopted in full)  The Greens were keen to ensure that the Finance Committee takes this into account when entering into any new contract.

Chas Booth, Green spokesperson for Culture and Sport, said: “Edinburgh’s winter festivals are an important part of the city’s cultural offering and brought in over £160m of income into the city last year.

“Greens want a transient visitor levy to ensure the economic benefits are shared with the city, but in the meantime our amendment sought to limit the council’s financial exposure to the festivals. We’re glad the administration accepted our proposal.”