Agenda item - Chairs Communications

20.1      The Chair stated that due to the length of the agenda, his communications would be circulated to Members via email and recorded in the minutes as below:

Royal Pavilion & Museums

The Royal Pavilion Saloon opened earlier this month after a four year closure. It is truly spectacular and the Chair encourages those who have not seen it yet to pay a visit.  It has been made possible through private donations and sponsorship.  Work has been undertaken by the Royal Pavilion’s conservation staff and a number of specialist crafts people, and the room features a number of items that have just been returned to the Royal Pavilion by Her Majesty the Queen.

A display has also opened, ‘A Royal Room Restored’, upstairs in the Pavilion.  This features photographs of the different stages of restoration, illustrates the design process and demonstrates some of the skills involved such as gilding, applying platinum to the walls and the carpet weaving process undertaken at Axminster.

Brighton Centre

Over the summer period the Brighton Centre has introduced an initiative to reduce single use plastics, working with catering suppliers to eliminate them from the stock and using persuasion marketing techniques to change visitor behaviours.

A new accessibility viewing platform has been installed to increase number of wheelchair users and carers we are able to accommodate and to optimise the viewing experience.  As well as this the Box Office and Outer Foyer have been refurbished, facilitating a more effective, efficient and accessible ticketing environment.

Arts

Preparatory ground work for the installation of a piece of public art has started on the land between Wharf Road Hove and A259 in Hove. Millimetre Ltd from Portslade won the commission to artistically and environmentally enhance this piece of land at the entrance to Shoreham Port and Hove Lagoon recreation area. The site hosts a chalk based butterfly bank and has been identified as part of a series of green corridors in the Shoreham Harbour Ecology and Green Infrastructure Study.  Millimetre were selected by a local panel with reps from  Friends of Hove Lagoon, Brighton and Hove City Council Arts & Planning teams and the local internationally-renowned  arts organisation Blast Theory , to deliver their proposal. Millimetre are working with the residents, schools, Shoreham port and the Friends of Hove Lagoon in the delivery of their public art piece entitled ‘The Spline’.

Visit Brighton

It’s been a busy summer working with over 541 City partners engaged in tourism in the last 3 months.

Visit Brighton has hosted visits from journalists which resulted in coverage including in The Scotsman; Red Online; The Sunday Telegraph; Hello!; Sunday Express; The Yorkshire Post; Yours and The Sunday Times.  As well as this, it has hosted regional titles including Kent Messenger; Liverpool Echo and Cambridge News, whilst internationally has hosted one of Germany’s largest national radio stations as well as Spain’s largest nation al newspaper El Mundo.

There have been proposals submitted for 42 conference enquiries, which have the potential to generate £11m of economic benefit and there confirmed events include the

Institute of Fire Engineers Annual Conference, the UNITE Sector Conference, TUC Conference British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons  and Alzheimer’s Research UK Annual Conference , which together will bring 9000 delegates to the City and create 1082 booked bed-nights of accommodation for conference clients, generating £10k commission.

Visit Brighton has also been actively engaged in the Martlets Snailspace campaign, sponsoring a snail promoting Brighton & Hove at London Victoria Station. The snail will be at Victoria until 18^th October and then will reside in Bartholomew Square until the event ends on 18^th November.

Seafront and Outdoor Events

This summer has been extremely busy for our Sport & Leisure teams with plenty of activity at the Volk’s Railway and the Seafront Office alongside a packed programme of Outdoor Events across the city.

The Volk’s Railway has already transported 130,000 passengers this season using the newly restored rolling stock. For the first time, the service will be continuing throughout October, culminating with the Veteran Car Run event on Sunday 4th November.  There are activities planned for the half-term fortnight in October as well as a special ‘Ghost Train’ experience for Halloween.

The Council’s beach lifeguards have had a very busy season as crowds flocked to our beaches to cool off and enjoy one of the hottest summers on record.  The lifeguards have finished now and the full set of statistics for the summer are being collated but we are delighted to report that our lifeguards have done an amazing job of keeping the hundreds of thousands of beach users safe with no fatalities during the season.  By mid-August our Seafront Officers and Beach Lifeguards had provided safety advice to over 26,000 members of public, responded to 101 major incidents, provided minor first aid treatment to 202 casualties, searched for and reunited 184 missing persons and saved 10 lives.

Over the last three months Brighton and Hove has hosted a range of fantastic events that have attracted many locals and visitors.  We held the largest ever Pride in the city with over 50,000 people watching a world famous pop star perform in the park whilst raising thousands of pounds for local charities and raising awareness of the LGBT community.  This is not to mention the many other thousands that came to our city to enjoy the parade and seafront that weekend, benefiting the wide range of businesses and supporting local employment. 

Other notable events that have taken place in the city were the Friends Fest and Triathlon.  Friends Fest took over 20,000 people back to their favourite 90’s sitcom to try on outfits, sit on the Friends sofa, see real props from the TV programme and generally have fun.  The Triathlon, which is growing in strength year by year, saw 1000 competitors take to the sea and road to test their strength and endurance which includes swimming, running and cycling.  There is generally a great interest in this growing event from the local community, with many competing that are members of local running and athletics clubs.  The sports village provided entertainment and information on health and fitness for the many thousands people that came to support their family members taking part, which contributed to a fantastic atmosphere.

Between July and the end of September Brighton and Hove has hosted over 90 events on public land, many of them free to attend and to the benefit and interest of many in our community.  Events continue to benefit our city in many ways.