Letter: Annoyed by suggestion that Vivacity has ‘collapsed’

Vivacity has not “collapsed”, it was not “ill conceived” in fact it was successfully and efficiently operating its services despite a reduction of 70% (in real terms) of its grant funding over the last ten years.

In March we were looking forward to delivering more surpluses to be reinvested in the city.

Under Vivacity’s stewardship tens of thousands more people have used our services which returned c.£60 million in social value to the city.

The Trustees made the decision to terminate its contract with the city council for reasons that are accurately reported in your own article on page 19. The reason Vivacity had to take this painful decision was that it was caught in a perfect financial storm. The loss of £8.5 million annualised revenue we generated ourselves due to Covid-19 lockdown, alongside the well published budget pressures of the council that have resulted in continued reductions in its contributions to Vivacity. This together with the significant costs of reopening and the predicted major loss of income due to social distancing and reduced capacities would have led to the collapse of the charity if the Trustees had not taken this action.

They took this action to protect the charity and in the best interests of the 500 staff who have served this city well for the last 10 years as Vivacity delivered award winning services to 116,000 individual Peterborough residents.

Frankly they and the people of Peterborough do not need the current situation turned into a political pantomime either in the pages of your newspaper last Thursday or outside the Lido last Friday. What is required is for all politicians to grasp just how serious this situation is and work towards helping to preserve the 500 jobs at stake (97% of whom live in the Peterborough area) and the wonderful services this city enjoyed before the lockdown. For our part this is what we will be working towards with the council over the next three months.

Nobody could be more proud than I to have led a team of 400 completely dedicated Vivacity volunteers. Over our 10 years, not one of our Trustees has taken a penny in remuneration from our charity because we understand the true importance of what Vivacity has provided and we wanted to see it thrive; and this was what it was doing up until March 2020.

Culture, Heritage and Leisure are not optional ‘nice to have’s’, they are core and essential to the City’s wellbeing and future prosperity.

Stewart Francis

Chair, Vivacity

Central Library,

Broadway, Peterborough.