HAS the Swan Theatre Board been playing a cynical, political game? Was their bid to run our theatre a delaying tactic designed to upset its rescue?

Surely they have some answers to give the people of Worcester.

When they called their public meeting on October 10, why did they not admit that the theatre's expenditure had gone out of control?

They had been given grants of taxpayers' money that were supposed to keep them going till April 2003.

So why did they not tell us that they had run up debts that are rumoured to be £180,000?

They may have thought they were under-funded. Many of us feel that we are in that situation, yet we do not go on spending money as if there is no tomorrow.

There seems to have been little control on what the management spent or any order of priority of expenditure.

Why did they pretend that they didn't know that the top up grant of £83,000, from the Worcester City Council was only available for three years initially, and then extended for a further year only - and not something they could automatically expect?

Would they like to explain why there was no Plan B to allow the theatre to continue under reduced expenditure?

Why were they still collecting money for their rescue fund when there was obviously no chance of rescue?

The Chairman of the Board, Gerald Harris has been making accusations in the Press that the council has been undemocratic about the selection of new management for the theatre.

Yet he is in charge of a Board that did away with the democratic nature of the management structure at the Swan.

Until three years ago, the members of the Board were trustees to the SAMA Association, which was a body that represented all the users of the theatre in the community.

This group was led to believe that West Midlands Arts would look more favourably on the theatre if the members of a new Board had complete powers.

The Association had been running the Theatre successfully for 35 years. But it took this new management of "successful" business people, who seemed not to know very much about running a theatre, three years to bring it to a state of insolvency.

The Association was supposed to continue as an advisory body but was never allowed to become that.

W F WELBOURNE,

Claines,

Worcester.