A festive fiasco in store for Salisbury? Christmas event cancelled

IT seems there’ll be precious little festive fun in Salisbury this year.

No Playhouse panto, and a Christmas market has been ruled out due to a distinct lack of enthusiasm from potential stallholders.

City officials gamely came up with plans for an alternative, scaled-down event, focused on half a dozen food kiosks, a ‘destination bar’, and some socially distanced entertainment, where families could sit safely in ‘bubbles’ to enjoy activities such as face painting, story time with Santa, and wreath-making.

All of it, naturally, designed for swift dismantling in the event of another lockdown.

A sponsor was said to be prepared to chip in 15 grand towards the £70,000 cost.

But councillors meeting on Monday were told they would have to make provision for a £20,000 shortfall.

And they took fright, backing Cllr Atiqul Hoque’s view that it wasn’t worth it and would have to be cost-neutral. Staff who went away and looked into the figures again have now come back  and said that can’t be done, so it’s all off.

That’s the nuts and bolts.

The online meeting took an unexpected turn, however, when that model of restraint Cllr Kevin (‘Get off!’) Daley suggested that the council had an “unhealthy relationship” with Daimee, the operators of the City Garden bar currently cheering up the Guildhall Square.

He asked whether the council could make some money for itself instead of letting others make “hundreds of thousands of pounds”.

Daimee ran last year’s successful Yuletide tepee and were in line to run this winter's 'destination bar'.

The company’s Aimee Hancock, not surprisingly, took strong exception to “being slandered” and suggested that Cllr Daley was taking “a bit of a liberty”.

She offered to show the business’s books to anyone interested, saying: “We have been nothing but honest and open. We are absolutely not taking advantage of the council.”

Chairman John Walsh was one of several councillors who felt that Mr Daley had been “unreasonable”, and his remarks had been “not very nice”.

But Cllr Daley was unabashed.

So, end result, the council has decided it hasn’t got money to lose. And that’s fair enough. Responsible, even.

But traders must be worrying that many Salisbury residents will head for Winchester instead, where a market will (Covid permitting) still be going ahead, for their annual splurge.