24 January - Still sitting in the dark
So
it happened, it has gone bust, but when I check the Storyteller website it says business
as usual with all the latest films available to see.
How come?
The Woolwich Wire reports that Bexley Council is looking to find a new
operator but Companies House says that The Really Local Group operated a dozen
companies of which RLG (Blockbuster) was only one.
The common factor is a Mr. Preston Paul Benson who has operated quite a large number
of companies over the past decade or so, some dissolved, some not but the still
operating cinemas appear to have been reduced to just
Sidcup, Reading and Ealing. Apparently operating independently of RLG and somehow being
kept going with funds from; well that is the big question.
Mr. Preston resigned his directorship at RLG (Blockbuster) on 16th January and
The Woolwich Wire provides a little more detail of the addresses still operating.
Operating a cinema at a time when most people are satisfied with the far from
optimum quality that comes down a phone line cannot be easy and an audience
of 13, as there was the only time I went there, must surely be a precarious
operation. Charging only a fiver to get in even if a bog standard chocolate bar
costs almost as much is not a way to get rich quick.
As I said that the time, the equipment in evidence was not exactly state of the
art; to be snobby for a moment, I wouldn’t give their loudspeakers house room. The
sort of thing you might see in a well equipped cinema costs around £5,000 per
audio channel and Dolby Atmos supports 128 channels though most cinemas would
max out around the 24 channel mark. It’s an expensive business.
A top rated laser projector starts at around £50,000. Even an upmarket domestic grade one
can be £15,000. IMAX starts at around £300,000. I don’t think it is surprising that the Storyteller was not the
best film experience and maybe Bexley Council baulked at the costs; always
supposing that they had a say in what was being planned.
It is worrying that Lewisham Council is exposed to the losses in Catford and I
sent Bexley an FOI as follows on 14th January to see if we in Bexley are too.
It has been reported that the Storyteller cinemas in Ealing, Peckham and Catford
have financial difficulties and that Lewisham Council is owed money. These reports
also refer “to a Bexley Council spokesperson confirming that it expects The Really
Local Group [the Sidcup cinema owner] to be liquidated.”
Under FOI regulations please…
1) Confirm that the latter report is true.
The cinema owner is said to have opened its venues
“backed” by government funds.
2) Is Bexley Council party to any agreement to underwrite funds which may have been provided
to The Really Local Group to ensure its presence in Sidcup and if so what are the limits of any such guarantee?
Question 1 is redundant now but taxpayers really do deserve to be assured that they are not being asked to shore up
a cinema because the alternative of seeing it close would be both sad and embarrassing.
If the FOI produces a simple No we can probably breath a sigh of relief but if
the answer is in any way evasive I will be pretty sure, after 15 years of Bexley
watching, that here is something going on that they would rather you knew nothing about.
If that is the case in a couple of week’s time when the FOI is due to be answered It will be
an uphill struggle to get anything out of them. All the staff involved will clam
up; they always do because they have too often displayed a
total lack of business acumen. Anyone remember the lack of an
overage clause in the Tesco contract which led to Bexley Council having no
interest in the profit made by Tesco when they reneged on the original contract?
In all probability, millions were lost.