A last minute plea was made to the members the town council this week over the future funding of Falmouth Visitor Centre.

Just prior to Falmouth Town Council setting its budget on Monday, Ryan Watts, marketing manager from the FalRiver company gave a presentation on the financial situation at the centre on Prince of Wales Pier and what it did.

Mr Watts appeared before members of the finance and general purposes committee to outline what the £8,000 a year the council had given to the centre did.

He made the appearance just as the town council was making ready to approve a budget that would see spending cuts.

Baseline running costs, he said, were at £85k a year, with just over £20,000 of revenue coming in, including the £8k the council currently gave.

He said basically as a business there is a deficit of about £65k that they put towards funding it.

“We are commercial entity and run the centre because there is commercial gain elsewhere,” he said.

“We provide info for visitors and locals and distribute hundreds, if not thousands, of bus timetables.

He said they also distribute Falmouth Town Maps produced by the town council as well as printing off GWR timetables for people as GWR don’t produce them anymore and the ferry guide for its services.

“The costs of running it are quite expensive the energy bill itself is in excess of £8,000,” he said “We get lots and lots of face to face enquiries coming in and hundreds and thousands of phone calls and lots of people through social media and email and even a few letters coming through the door as well.”

He said they also offer volunteering opportunities disseminating information as they can’t put IN more staff.

“This year is a very big year for Falmouth with Tall Ships and Armed Forces day and we are already doing a lot of work in the background," he said. "We’ve already had lots of enquiries."

He told Cllr John Spargo that the centre cost £5,000 PA in rent to Cornwall Council, rates were £2,700, electric £5,500, gas just over £2K, water £540 and the rest is staff costs.

“The reason we picked it up when Cornwall Council closed all the visitor centres about 12 years ago was because we have a commercial position so it was important to run it as well as being good for the town,” he said. “It is also important for the visitor economy but it is also strategically positioned for us. It is the best place to have it for the company.”

Cllr Steve Eva said they knew the value of visitor information centre, but they had a situation where they’d got to find more out of the budgets.

“It’s very difficult for us and it’s very difficult for you,” he said.

He said he asked BID if they could pay and they had said they couldn’t because they had got to try and renew Falmouth Bid for next year and to try and raise it now is just a difficult time.

“So we are all in difficult times and I understand where you’re coming. I know the chair has an idea people might listen to as a compromise at the end of the day but it’s not the fact we are trying to punish you. "It’s the fact we have to be sensible and I do think town councils are easy targets for funding in the good days but we’ve gone beyond that now where we have to watch every penny we spend.

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“I think BID should be paying something into it and I think the time will come you will have to cast your net a bit further than you are.”

His sentiment was echoed by Cllr Spargo who said: “I’m a business, I pay into the BID and I think you should be at the top of the list to get some funding for this. That’s what the BID’s about, it’s about marketing the town.”

In the end councillors agreed to give £4,000 for 2023/24, half of what they had done before, with some additional supplements from the unspent grants and Councillor Community Chest contributions.