arding the Swan Theatre, its future operation and indeed existence over and above the simple reduction of funding.

For John Phillpott to constantly attempt to make it about personalities is not strictly accurate and, given his championing of Chris Jaeger, one might also say dishonest.

It took at least three articles about how wonderful Mr Jaeger was before John Phillpott admitted to their friendship in print and no, a lot of us were not aware of this.

And, equally so, I have heard as many voices against, as John Phillpott has heard for.

There was no formal bidding process for the Swan. No adverts were put in local or national papers. Nothing appeared in the trade press. Indeed the only reason that Rage (a group that expressed an interest in managing the Swan) from Birmingham heard about it was that one of their group lives in Worcester and contacted me.

Regulations

But there had been discussions, in private, between Chris Jaeger and Stephen Inman as far back as October last year.

In essence, a grant for £54,000 was available and the groups were in theory tending for that.

Surely then, some proper regulations apply to the business of the council and tenders? And if not, why not in this case?

Then comes the reality behind the Huntingdon Arts bid and we discover that, on top of the grant already mentioned, they are asking for the building to be maintained by the council that may well add up to £30,000 on to the annual bill.

On top of this, there's a start-up grant to enable Huntingdon Arts to establish an office and change software.

Again, who's being asked to pay this? I am - through my council tax.

If ICI moved here to Worcester and asked the council for a start-up grant to paint their offices, would the reply not be "I'm sorry but that's your business." So why not in this case?

Why are Huntingdon Arts not prepared to equip their own business and maintain the building? Possibly in case it doesn't work and in two years' time they can hand it back, claiming the council did not give them enough support and they had tried as hard as they could.

These are not loans that the council is offering here that Huntingdon Arts could pay back from the profits of the Swan.

Scrutinised

Of course the bid should have been "called in". The amount of money on offer is very quickly approaching that which was cut from the Swan grant in the first place.

If that was done on grounds of cost saving, then something, somewhere is going very wrong.

As a council taxpayer, then, I want to see decisions like this scrutinised properly.

To misquote John Phillpott - actually it's high time the people of Worcester realised what the Conservative group are doing to the Arts in this city.

By handing control of the Swan to Huntingdon Arts they are effectively privatising the Arts and throwing all their eggs into one basket.

What if that basket were to fall? What then? Through all their much-trumpeted cuts and redundancy programme, the council has now proudly announced that it has only to make one post compulsorily redundant. The post is that of the Arts Development Officer.

STEVE QUICK,

Ex-Arts Development Officer,

Worcester.