CALLS for clarity have been made after Coventry councillors received a letter from Assembly Festival claiming it was owed almost £1.5million by the City of Culture Trust.
Coventry City Council said it was aware of the correspondence, which was issued to all councillors by the firm which ran the Assembly Festival Gardens during the City of Culture year.
The trust, set up to oversee a three-year programme of legacy events, went into administration last week and representatives of joint administrators Mike Kienlen and Daryl Warwick said they would not be commenting on individual creditor claims at this time.
The Assembly Festival’s artistic director William Burdett-Coutts said the insolvency of the trust had put them in a ‘very difficult position.’
Mr Burdett-Coutts added he believed ‘whole-heartedly’ in the concept of the City of Culture, and felt it would be a tragedy for the whole award scheme to be damaged as a result of Coventry Trust’s debt.
He also claimed as of yet Assembly Festival has received no correspondence from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) or Coventry City Council and urged them both to urgently bring the issue to a resolution.
Conservative councillor Gary Ridley said the trust and the city council needed to urgently make a statement to clarify the situation.
“Given that the trust was chaired by the chief executive of Coventry City Council, and the accounts were signed off by him, there are huge questions facing the council too,” he said.
“We all desperately wanted the year to leave a shining legacy, but I worry this experience makes it more difficult for us to attract funding and large events in the future.”
A Coventry City Council spokesperson said: “It should be recognised that the council is also a creditor of the City of Culture Trust.
“Although the council fully understands and appreciates the concerns that the Assembly Festival has raised, the facts are that the City of Culture Trust is a separate, independent organisation to which the council had no direct control over.
“The council has also not provided any form of indemnity or guarantee to Assembly Festival on the sums they have incurred as a consequence of any contractual arrangement they have with the trust.”
