New hire rates to boost town hall bookings

The Comhairle is set to introduce a new ‘middle tier’ of fees for hiring Stornoway Town Hall to make the hall more affordable for semi-commercial and part-time traders.

The move comes as figures reveal that in the last year there were no hires of the facility at its full commercial rate.

A number of the users of the Town Hall are, according to a Comhairle report going before this week’s meeting of the Education, Sport and Children’s Services Committee, ‘either part-time or hobby businesses, for whom the full commercial rate is prohibitively expensive. The same applies to many music concerts, which struggle to break even’.

In addition to the introduction of new charge band, existing fees will increase by 2 per-cent.

The total income generated by use of the hall in 2018 was £15,809 an increase of more than £3k on the previous year’s income. Occupancy of the hall in 2018 increased by around a half compared with the previous year, with bookings on 53 per-cent of available days.