Council leader accused of mocking community groups with Blackadder comment

Councillor Pip Allnatt was addressing the latest full council meeting and explaining why the council could not afford to take on the financial burden of running the site.

He defended the authority’s decision to partner with Loughborough College Group in planning to create a Cultural Hub, including a small performing arts space, as part of the redevelopment project at the Stockyard.

And he invoked the saying of Baldrick – a character in the Rowan Atkinson Blackadder show who is ridiculed for coming up with ‘a cunning plan’ to solve problems – to describe political and online criticism of the Cultural Hub scheme.

Councillor Allnatt told the meeting: “Before Christmas there was much blather on social media, in the press and assertions by others that they had a cunning plan but I’m afraid Blackadder is not showing up in this theatre.

"So I now hope that people can now understand the wisdom of our general approach to opening up our Stockyard project to creatively provide some alternative in the area of culture and education.”

A number of complaints are understood to have been made to the council by residents, including a formal complaint by Lisa Bramall, who said the remarks were not befitting a council leader. She said he was undermining plans to take over the college as a SEND education centre and proposals for running the theatre as a community-owned enterprise.

In a letter shared with the Melton Times, she wrote: “There are videos circulating online in which he is clearly mocking groups of our community for trying to save Melton College and Theatre by comparing those members of the community to a Blackadder sketch.

“Those he appears to be referring to as ‘Blather’ are parent carers from Birchwood School and their young people, Discovery Schools Trust and the theatre group CIC.”

Councillor Allnatt said after the meeting that his Blackadder-themed comments were aimed at opposition leader, Councillor Ronan Browne, in connection with his criticisms of the Cultural Hub project, and not community groups.

He told the Melton Times: “I think it is wrong for the college to close the theatre without knowing that a buyer will continue to operate it.

“I am personally willing to support a community bid with a £1,000 donation.

“The price of £3.5m for the college site is certainly too much for the council and will be very difficult for any community group to raise.”

He said the Cultural Hub was an ‘imaginative’ alternative for retaining performing arts in the town, adding: “It will not be a full-blown traditional theatre but doing nothing is simply not an option.”

In his comments at the council meeting, the leader said buying the college/theatre site for £3.5M and taking on the essential £2M repairs needed would add about five per cent to the council’s net budget and increase this year’s Council Tax ‘a further four-fold’. The authority would also then need to subsidise running costs, he added.