Colin Hilton (158)
LIVERPOOL Culture Company will be wound up at the end of the city’s flagship year, it emerged last night, but the city council hopes to offer the employees new roles within the local authority.
It is the first time the council has explicitly spelled out that the company created to deliver 08 will cease to be – a new in-house business unit will be set up in its place.
The council has not ruled out redundancies among the 100 staff at the Culture Company but it hopes some will be offered roles within the new business unit or be redeployed elsewhere.
Last night, the council admitted that less staff than it currently had would be needed, but refused to say how many would get jobs in the new Culture unit.
Although around 140 staff are employed by the Culture Company, about 30 work for the tourist information service which is currently undergoing its own separate review.
Ultimately the number of people offered jobs in the new cultural unit will be dictated by the budget set by the council.
Chief executive Colin Hilton said discussions were now under way as to whether the budget should be increased.
He said the council had a good record of redeploying staff and cited two care homes, Leighton Dene and Boaler Street, which are due to close. He said 77 staff of the 87 at the two homes had already been found new jobs at the authority.
The 08 Place, in Whitechapel, will be renamed and the council is currently working on a re-branding exercise for the city, post-2008. Culture Company director Kris Donaldson said the new unit would be larger than the culture department that the council had pre-2003, when the Capital of Culture was awarded to Liverpool.
“We are keeping in essence of what the Culture Company did in terms of functions,” said Mr Donaldson.
“The team is going to be larger than in 2003. The reason why 2008 has worked so well is not just because of what the Culture Company has done but because of the other [arts] partners in the city. They have raised their game significantly and that’s a big part of what we all learned.”
On Friday, the council will submit a bid to the North West Development Agency for £3m over three years to help the cultural programme.
