Burnham-On-Sea community group BEST (Burnham Events Social Team) says the town’s skating rink is now self-funding and will return again this coming Christmas season.
Peter Burridge-Clayton, who is a town councillor and a member of BEST (Burnham Events Social Team), gave an update on the group’s plans at a Town Council meeting on Monday. It comes after the council gave
He said: “I am speaking on behalf of Burnham Events Social Team, and I would like to give an update on the success of this year’s skating rink. Whilst we are under no obligation to do this, this year we felt we would like to inform members of the progress made.”
“We would like to thank everybody for the fantastic support we have been given in our second year. We had an excellent response again, with day by day figures being comparable with last year, and some days even better. We are delighted to say we have raised enough funds to be able to run the rink again for Christmas 2017.”
“We will be having a meeting with officers of Sedgemoor District Council in the near future about a few more ideas to improve this already excellent facility for our towns. We are hoping to make it bigger and better for years to come.”
“We feel we have honoured our commitment to this council and we have achieved everything we promised to do. We have made the rink sustainable and self-funding. We would now like to do as Cllr Bill Hancock said last year, and that is be allowed to continue like any other group in this town and be left to do what we do best, and that is run the rink and events as an independent voluntary group. We would appreciate that being minuted this year.”
“Members may know that we were able to purchase a rink in the autumn of last year, and we have since purchased an extra 200 pairs of ice skates. We also purchased all the electrical works that we need such as the cables, sockets, emergency exit lights and safety cut outs etc. We also purchased a large number of synthetic tiles which will enable us to almost double the rink size if we so wish to.”
“It is only at the idea stage at the moment but our committee are looking at the possibility of two marquees, or one twice as long, and having them open sided, to create more of an atmosphere. We are hoping to have stalls around the outside of the rink, and hopefully get a reliable children’s fun fair to provide a number of rides for at least the opening day or maybe longer. Just thoughts at this stage, as all this needs to go through our committee and SDC.”
“I would like to put on record our thanks to thank all those that volunteered their time to make this happen. Some days it was extremely cold, but they carried on regardless and they deserve a big thank you. We were able to staff the rink this year entirely with volunteers as our group is growing, and in fact we gained three extra members in the first week the rink was open.”
“The feedback we were getting from the users of the rink was excellent, and it was a very enjoyable experience watching so many have so much fun. We are looking at exciting times ahead in future years.”
“We now have our own multi-event insurance this year, and we had a specific separate insurance for the skating rink. We have a number of new events planned for this year, and we would welcome any more volunteers who wish to get involved.”
“We have already held a successful quiz night in the Ritz Social Club, we are also having an evening of clairvoyance with Gary Pullin at the Ritz Social Club on Saturday 18th February at 7.30pm – tickets are £5 from the Ritz or Toycupboaard in Pier Street.”
“We are also planning an 80’s night, Somerset Day, St Georges Day, an Armistice event, the August bank holiday Monday fete, and our war time Blitz in the Ritz event again which was a sell-out within a few weeks of the tickets going on sale last year.”
For further details about BEST, contact Kathy Jones on 07743355436, Peter Burridge-Clayton on 07850240677 or Nora Hayes (Secretary) at norahayes@sky.com.
BEST secured £16,000 of grant funding from Burnham and Highbridge Town Council for the rink in the autumn of 2015 to enable the skating rink to go ahead, as we reported here.
