‘BETRAYAL – Grandad gave his abbey to the city..how can council shut people out?‘ screamed the front page headline of yesterday’s Nottingham Evening Post. Indeed. Sir Julien Cahn would have roared with laughter at the headline – at the thought of the well brought up Jewish boy owning an Abbey and being called Grandad. But he wouldn’t have laughed at the message. He would have been livid.
But then again, if Sir Julien were alive today, it’s unlikely Newstead Abbey would find itself in such a mess. The far-sighted business man would never have allowed Nottingham Council to run it into the ground, without a long-term strategy to fund it for the future. And that’s the real problem here. Newstead has become a poisoned chalice for the Council. It doesn’t bring them votes; it’s outside the city boundary; it’s an easy target for cost saving; and who really cares about it anyway? The Council may be rather surprised by the huge amount of emotion that their proposed cuts have provoked amongst the people of Nottingham.
Personally I don’t see the point in just laying into the Council. Yes, they’ve got to make drastic funding cuts and yes, it probably isn’t sensible for them to carry on funding the ‘burden’ that is Newstead Abbey. So now they should take a long and hard look as to how they can either give it to another body or business, or work with a partner to make it an economic success. It needs a business plan, a clear marketing strategy and some people with vision and foresight to make things happen. I wonder whether they can pull this off?
