THE idea of selling off Ilkley's King's Hall and Winter Gardens and other entertainment venues is being floated by Bradford Council as cutbacks continue.

A management buy-out of Bradford Theatres - which also runs St George’s Hall and the Alhambra Theatre and Studio - is one of four options which could be looked at, new documents reveal.

The four Council-run venues will receive a subsidy of £418,000 in 2016/17.

But they are having to rely less and less on the public purse each year. The budget has already been cut by £578,500 over the past five years and is expected to be cut by a further £120,000 in the next financial year.

A report by Phil Barker, assistant director of sport and culture, runs through four possible options for how the theatres could be run in future, in the wake of the authority’s New Deal - a wholesale rethink of the services it provides amid reducing budgets.

The four options are: to keep things as they are, to commission a commercial management company to run the venues, to set up an independent charitable trust to run them or to allow a management buy-out, with the theatres run as a community interest company.

Mr Barker said: “In the current economic climate we have to look at every available option for the future delivery of all Council services.

“This includes theatres, as well as halls, museums, libraries and sporting facilities.

“This year’s budget proposals include a feasibility study looking at the potential for a trust-type model to be adopted in the theatre and halls service.

“Decisions will be made at the outcome of this study and although management buyout is possible, it is not expected to be a preferred option moving forward.”

The Council had already commissioned consultants to look into the possible financial benefits of running many of its sports and cultural facilities using a trust model. The outcome of this study has yet to be revealed.

Councillor Sarah Ferriby, whose portfolio at the Labour-led council includes theatres, stressed this was only the very beginning of a discussion about the future of the venues.

She said: “It is what could happen, at this stage, not necessarily what would happen. It is obviously early days.”

Leader of the opposition Conservatives, Councillor Simon Cooke, said his group had long called for a trust model to be considered.

He said the advantage of running the theatres together as a trust was that profitable venues could subsidise unprofitable ones.

He said: “If you just take the theatres on their own, the Alhambra aside, they are very difficult to justify as a commercial operation.

“The Alhambra would work as a commercial theatre - it is profitable now and there is no reason why that would change.

“But a trust allows you to cross-subsidise it, so it would be more interesting for those bits of the business which are not quite as profitable.”

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland, leader of the Liberal Democrats, also said she would like to see the council offload the theatres.

She said: “I have always advocated some form of charitable trust or community interest company.”

She said if someone could “take the job of running the theatres off the Council”, this could allow officers to focus on tasks like giving social care to vulnerable people.

But she said she would rather it formed part of a wider discussion about the district’s cultural offering, which could also bring in other venues such as the former Odeon building.

Bradford Theatres has a turnover of between £6m and £8m a year and employs 68 people.

Around two-thirds of available tickets (65 per cent) were sold in 2015/16, compared to a national average theatre occupancy of 60 per cent.

The report also gives an update on the £5.2m refurbishment scheme at St George’s Hall, which has already closed. Four companies have been invited to tender for the contract which will be awarded in the week beginning January 9, 2017, with work starting on-site in early 2017 and the hall reopening in late 2017.

The refurbishment should allow St George’s Hall to draw in more visitors, reducing its need to be subsidised, the report says.