Sheffield City Trust to hand back venues to council

Pulp are among Sheffield bands that have played at the city's arena

The charitable trust which runs some of Sheffield's biggest venues is set to hand them back to the council after receiving a £7m bailout.

Sheffield City Trust (SCT) will return facilities including Sheffield Arena, Ponds Forge and the City Hall in 2024, a council report said.

Council officers said the £7m avoided "a potential insolvency situation".

A leading opposition councillor said it showed there were "no bounds to how much council tax subsidy SCT gets".

Andrew Snelling, chief executive of SCT, recently said the organisation had a "bright future ahead" and was on the hunt to add to its 1,071 staff.

But Sheffield City Council officers reported that the Trust's current funding arrangements with the council were not sufficient to provide the level of security it needed to lawfully continue trading. 

Councillor Shaffaq Mohammed, leader of the city's Liberal Democrats, said it was "end game" for the organisation, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

"The taxpayers of Sheffield will be hit one more time. We are going to foot the pension deficit and there is a £7m budget gap that we will have to foot too.

"It is yet more valuable council tax spent on this now soon-to-be defunct organisation."

He added: "There seems to be no bounds to how much council tax subsidy SCT gets."

The SCT has run sporting and cultural venues in Sheffield for more than 30 years but will finish in 2024

A new funding agreement was agreed to keep SCT going until it hands back the facilities. 

As well as a £4m pension deficit, £3m has already been provided of the £7m bailout, with the remaining £4m coming from a reserve set up in 2020 to deal with future SCT costs. 

Council officers said: "It avoids a potential insolvency situation that could have significant impact on the delivery of these services in the short to medium term."

The business plan proposed was considered to be "very prudent," officers added.

Sheffield City Council is expected to put the control of the facilities, which will receive £100m of investment over the next 30 years, out to tender.