How a world-class music venue became embroiled in controversy

A brand spanking state-of-the art concert venue in the heart of the city centre. World-class acoustics and facilities. A-list stars booked to perform. Millions of pounds in ticket sales pouring in.

On first glance, Bristol Beacon would appear to be the runaway success story that the city’s residents and its thriving cultural, arts and entertainment scenes deserve.

But peel away a few layers – like construction workers did inside the Victorian building when the refurbishment got underway in 2018 – and it’s a horror show.

A “worst-case scenario”, as city council papers alarmingly, but honestly, called it.

So what went so badly wrong for a project that almost tripled in costs from an initial £48m to a whopping £132m, of which £84m has landed on city council taxpayers, with millions more to be paid back by the authority over the next half century in interest on a loan to fund the escalating price tag?

The reopening of Bristol Beacon has been hailed as a runaway success story that the city’s residents and its thriving cultural, arts and entertainment scenes deserve, but is this the reality? – photo: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees’s administration and City Hall chiefs have told a consistent story – that there just was no way of knowing how structurally unsound the property would turn out to be until contracts were already signed and work got underway, and that every time the bill increased, they were left with no choice but to continue because the alternatives were even worse.

Independent finance watchdogs, however, have a different view of events.

External auditors Grant Thornton placed the blame firmly with Bristol City Council – and that was when the total cost had risen only to £107m.

The tale of woe, however, begins in June 2019 with the first hint that all was not going to plan with the redevelopment of the venue that was then called the Colston Hall.

Signs that the building developments weren’t going to plan were revealed in as early as June 2019, when the “delicate Victorian structure of the building” had started to reveal itself to builders, engineers and demolition experts – photo: Bristol City Council

Details began to emerge in council papers to cabinet of “significant amount of structural issues” – photo: Bristol City Council

That was when it was announced that the reopening date of 2020 needed to be pushed back to autumn 2021 – a wildly optimistic forecast, as it turned out – because the “delicate Victorian structure of the building” had started to reveal itself to builders, engineers and demolition experts.

One year later came the “worst-case scenario” assessment in council papers to cabinet that highlighted a “significant amount of structural issues”, although details remained sketchy, other than the tantalising mention of “archeological discoveries”.

Whatever the problems were, they had halted the design process and required a number of urgent temporary works to make the building safe.

All became clear the following month in July 2020 with a warts-and-all report to cabinet, complete with glorious technicolour photos, of just how bad it was.

And it was bad – rotten timbers, hitherto unknown Elizabethan well shafts, including one they hadn’t yet found the bottom of, hollow or rubble-filled pillars propping roofs that at some point in the dim and distant past had been simply covered up and not recorded, asbestos wool panels sealed in the roof, “dangerous” stonework, dry and wet rot….

On top of all that, nesting gulls had caused a fortnight’s delay to demolishing a wall. When it rains…

It wasn’t pretty, and with the bill about to more than double from what was then £52m, the council knew it would be picking most of the tab as the hall’s freehold owner and responsible for underwriting the full costs.

A heavy cost: Over the five years of construction, Bristol Beacon has almost tripled in costs from an initial £48m to a whopping £132m, of which £84m has landed on city council taxpayers – photo: Bristol City Council

The cabinet report said: “Issues with the building structure have been encountered that no surveys or risk assessment could reasonably have identified.

“The issues encountered were far greater than a team assessing a building of this type would normally encounter.”

Deputy mayor Craig Cheney told cabinet: “Working on old buildings is always a risk – you don’t know what you’ve got until you dig a hole.” Or indeed find one.

“None of us could have predicted that the pillars holding up the roof were hollow or any of the other things we’ve found,” he said.

In September 2020 the building was renamed the Bristol Beacon – as far back as 2017, the intention had always been to give it a new moniker to sever links with Edward Colston and the slave trade.

But a change of name did not come with a change of fortune.

Fast-forward to March 2021 and cabinet approved the new cost of the revamp – a total of £107m – which came with a revised opening date of late 2023, three years later than originally scheduled.

The new report said the issues uncovered “far outstripped the worst-case scenarios contemplated”. As Edmund Blackadder once almost said: Even worse than the worst-case scenario? That’s pretty bad.

Cross-party scrutiny councillors, including the Labour administration’s harshest critics, called the increase “bonkers” but ultimately voted unanimously to back the extra spend.

Stephen Peacock, the council’s then-executive director of growth & regeneration and now its chief executive, said “a lot of experts” underestimated the hidden structural problems when the initial costs were agreed.

He told councillors: “Can I sit here and say that means that nothing else will ever come up? Of course I can’t.
“But compared with where we were, the building has fully revealed itself. There are no hidden nooks and crannies left.”

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees’s administration and City Hall chiefs have continued to tell the same story – that every time the bill increased, they were left with no choice but to continue because the alternatives were even worse – photo: Ellie Pipe

When the council’s annual accounts were published in April 2022, they revealed that the Bristol Beacon was valued at zero pounds and that the authority had already written off £39m on the redevelopment – a figure that subsequently rose to £69m and then £93m over the following two years’ statements, plus a further £4m still committed to contractors.

Opposition Conservative councillor Jonathan Hucker, an accountant, said that in financial terms, the venue was effectively “worthless” and that in the commercial world this would be a “financial disaster”.

Bristol City Council said the concert hall’s value went “well beyond the bricks and mortar” because the investment would stimulate economic growth, create jobs and increase tourism. It said the total economic impact would “ultimately dwarf” the £107m costs.

Two months later, Grant Thornton’s annual value-for-money report came out which criticised the local authority’s handling of the scheme at the outset.

It said: “The council underestimated the complexity and difficulty of the redevelopment of the Bristol Beacon and did not have effective arrangements in place throughout 2020/21.

“Prior to agreement of the contract, there had been limited exploration undertaken to understand the extent, scope and condition of the building.

“The failure to have effective management arrangements in place from the start of the project and to have any cost certainty before entering into the contract has resulted in delays and increased costs.

“The council should learn from the Bristol Beacon project and ensure all capital projects have effective and rigorous project management arrangements in place.”

Then, in January 2023, it got even worse when the total bill spiralled again by another £25m to £132m, including £84m from the city council.

Cabinet was told that the additional borrowing to fund the increase would be paid back at £2.3m annually for the next 50 years.

But a report to the meeting said this was, astonishingly, the cheapest option.

Pausing the project, mothballing the property and restarting in a year would cost £165m while stopping the work altogether and making the building safe would need more than £200m, to a large degree because of how much it would be to get out of the contracts.

Money from other funders, including Arts Council England, West of England Combined Authority and Heritage Lottery Fund, would have to be repaid, and the council could kiss goodbye to the amount the attraction would generate to the local economy – between £324m and £412m over two decades, including £254m to Bristol.

So, faced with no real choice, council leaders again ploughed on and also decided to cut all funding to Bristol Music Trust (BMT), the charity that runs Bristol Beacon day to day on its behalf.

BMT’s lease was renegotiated and it recently emerged that the organisation would have to pay back £8m of profits to the city council over the course of the 30-year agreement. Critics point out this is a drop in the ocean compared with the amount spent overall.

BMT chief executive Louise Mitchell told scrutiny councillors ahead of reopening night in November: “The building looks absolutely amazing – I don’t think anybody will go in there and say, ‘Well, where’s the money gone?’.”

The opening night of the Bristol Beacon in November – photo: Giulia Spadafora

Adam Postans is a local democracy reporter for Bristol and South Gloucestershire.

Main photo: Martin Booth

Read next:

• Council spent more on Bristol Beacon that building houses in 2022
• In photos: Bristol Beacon opening night
• Bristol Beacon: ‘A venue for everyone in the city’

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