Royston Picture Palace sparks row over cinema's future

Last year, councillors unanimously voted to progress plans for the currently closed cinema to be run by a Community Interest Company (CIC).

It followed a recommendation made by the council’s cinema working party, set up in April 2023 after the previous operator Saffron Screen announced they were pulling out.

But councillors on the finance committee yesterday voted for the council to "consider" operating the cinema itself.

At yesterday’s meeting, a divide emerged between three members of the cinema working party – Cllr Emma Squire-Smith, Cllr Ruth Brown and Cllr Stephen Lockett – and the other members of the committee.

Seating at Royston Picture Palace is currently owned by Royston First. (Image: LDRS) The working party has supported plans for the cinema, located at the Town Hall, to be run by an outside company.

Councillors heard that new information – understood to be another external proposal – had been received by the town council last week, too late to be discussed at the meeting.

A pre-procurement notice was issued in January but, ten months on, legal advice has delayed the process.

Cllr Emma Squire-Smith, who has chaired the working party, said the advice did not mean the original procurement plan was unviable.

She said: "There are challenges to the original plan and it specifies processes we must follow, it does not say it’s just not allowed."

But Cllrs Squire-Smith, Brown and Lockett were outnumbered by other councillors on the committee.

It meant the committee approved a proposal from Cllr John Rees urging the council to consider running the cinema itself and employing a cinema manager.

He said: "We want the cinema to reopen. No ifs or buts about it, we want the cinema reopened."

Cllr Squire-Smith said, as chair of the working party, she had given permission for officers to look into the option of the council employing a cinema manager itself as long ago as April – but she added this was not "the core option" the working party had looked into.

Meanwhile, Cllr Brown said the proposal for the council to consider running the cinema itself "effectively bypasses the cinema working party and is undemocratic".

She said the plan for a CIC to run the cinema, first raised in October, was "very firm" and had a "business case" attached to it.

Councillors also approved a proposal put forward by Cllr Michael Harrison – who sits on the working party but was not present for its most recent meeting – for the council to consider buying the cinema equipment, including the seating, which is currently owned by Royston First. 

Cllr Squire-Smith said neither proposal had been "brought to the working party", and suggested this was "disrespectful" to members of it.

Royston First, the town’s Business Improvement District (BID), set up the cinema in partnership with the town council in 2013 and ran it until 2019.

From 2019 until 2023, the cinema was run by Saffron Screen, an outside company, as part of an agreement with Royston First and the town council.

In the cinema’s final six months, Royston First provided £1,000 a month to keep it running while a long-term solution was sought. It closed at the end of 2023.

Cllr Harrison said Royston First had "on a few occasions recently … advised officers and councillors that the [cinema] equipment is owned by them and they can remove it at any time".

He said the council had "spent thousands of pounds of council tax payers’ money on legal advice and staff time on researching a future for the cinema", and warned that it would be "wasted" if Royston First removed the equipment.

Cllr Harrison accused Royston First of having "pulled out" of the cinema back in 2019, but Cllr Brown said the BID "have always been involved, they’ve always been party to it, the equipment … is owned by them".

She said: "I believe they want this cinema open as much, if not more than we do."

Cllr Squire-Smith added: "I really think it would be much better for us to work closely with our counterparts at Royston First to get the cinema open, as I thought we’d been doing since the working party started."

Paul Brown, manager of Royston First, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that since late 2023 "all efforts to finalise the agreement [with the CIC] have been blocked and key information has been withheld". He said the BID had spent more than £70,000 on the cinema equipment.

Royston First, as well as two members of the public, are represented on the cinema working party but were not provided with the legal advice given to the council about plans for the cinema’s future.

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A proposal from Cllr Brown for the advice to be released to them was rejected by the finance committee.

She said it was "ridiculous" non-councillors on the working party could not see the advice, and said it meant they could not "meaningfully" take part in discussions:

She said: "They’ve put in a lot of time and effort as volunteers, and they were not allowed to have sight of this advice."

The committee also rejected a proposal from Cllr Brown that the council agree to pay the creator of the cinema’s website £200 per year to maintain it. It did agree to retain the website’s domain name.