The re-opening of the Guild Lounge as a temporary venue has been successful say Town Hall chiefs, despite it losing £70,000 in its first year.
The 300-seater venue in the foyer of the Guild Hall complex was reopened in 2024 and has seen additional funding now pumped in.
But a Freedom of Information request from Blog Preston shows the challenging environment for the foyer venue – which is currently recruiting for two staff members as it looks to adapt its theatre and live shows offering.
Read more: Second MP backs our Preston major venue petition
The first year of operating for the Guild Lounge, which began with a burst of shows but has since scaled-back the volume of live shows, saw it incur costs of £190,008 and it brought in income of £119,660 – a loss of £70,348.
Preston City Council said the venue, which opened in October 2024, was running a pilot until March 2025 to test the appetite for the venue with a handful of shows continuing after the initial period.
It has a capacity of 500 for standing-only events and 350-seats for a studio theatre set up.
Plans are now in place to pump more funding into the venue and also bring in a theatre marketing consultant, alongside a marketing assistant, to boost what the venue does.
Information released by the Guild Hall website states 5,000 tickets were sold during the pilot period for 45 shows, just over 100 people per event, although the venue also hosted conferences and other private functions alongside live shows.
Two events are currently listed for the venue, performances of Dr Seuss’ The Cat in The Hat on Saturday 16 May and Sunday 17 May and an audience with cricket legend Lord Ian Botham on Thursday 17 September.
A spokesperson for the city council said on the future of the Guild Lounge; “The 2024–25 Guild Lounge pilot successfully demonstrated both the viability of the operating model and the strong local appetite for a commercial entertainment offer.
“Members have approved a further two‑year extension, including the recruitment of a dedicated staff team to manage the venue. The Guild Lounge will relaunch in 2026 with a refreshed programme, continuing to grow its audience and contribute to the city’s night-time economy.”
Speaking last month following the announcement of the Guild Hall decision – where the council will spend the next 12-months considering what the future is for the building, cabinet member for arts and culture, councillor Anna Hindle, said: “The Guild Lounge continues to establish itself as a vital part of Preston’s cultural landscape and we have provided additional funding this year for an extended programme of events which is helping to fill the void left by the bigger Guild Hall venues that are currently out of action. Welcoming spaces where people can gather to connect and be inspired is important and we hope to build on this in the future.”
The investment in the Guild Lounge is one of a number of spending commitments made by the council’s Labour group to boost arts and culture in the city with a new comedy festival planned for 2027 along with more city centre events.
Guild Hall itself has value written down due to current state
Our Freedom of Information request also revealed more than £300,000 has been wiped off the value of the Guild Hall building due to the ongoing issues with crumbling concrete found in the roof as part of the RAAC (reinforced aerated concrete) crisis.
In the 2024-25 financial year (running April to April) the Guild Hall, excluding the Guild Lounge, had £951,532 spent on it by the city council.
However this included a capital recharge of £313,956 which was up from £13,000 the financial year before.
Quizzed on this jump in cost the city council said this was due to a re-valuation of the building.
A city council spokesperson said: “The 2024/25 capital charge of £313,956 relates to an external professional valuation of the Guild Hall as of 31 March 2025. This valuation reduced the building’s value further due to the ongoing RAAC issues. The £313,956 charge reflects the required accounting adjustment to recognise this reduction in value.”
Without this capital charge the amount spent on the Guild Hall has fallen significantly compared to the previous year, and brings the total amount spent on the building since 2019 when the city council took back control of the Guild Hall to £4.94million.
It’s generated £629,871 in income since that time.
A plan to reopen the venue in September 2023 had to be abandoned after the discover of RAAC in the Grand Hall and Charter Theatre roof.
Hopes of re-opening and repairing the venue have remained stalled since then as reports and estimates come in indicating the scale of the repairs needed. The venue as it stands is not safe to open to the public, as Blog Preston revealed in a report by technical specialists Curtins which was released to us under the Freedom of Information Act.
The report appears to show the Charter Theatre roof is an easier fix than the Grand Hall itself which is more complex due to its design and also cannot be easily inspected by engineers to assess the true scale of the decay to the roof panels.
Where next for the Guild Hall?
Funding for the Guild Lounge is committed to until late 2027 and at March’s full council meeting the city’s ruling Labour administration announced they would spend the next 12-months considering proposals and whether funding could be found for either repairing or rebuilding a new Guild Hall – which may not be on the same site.
This matches comments made by the city council’s leader councillor Matthew Brown in September last year when the Town Hall’s stance began to shift from repair to potential demolition and rebuild as an option.
Entertainment and venue consultants have been brought in, IPW, to assess the viability of any future venue for the city – with £100,000 spent on their reports.
In December 2024 councillor Hindle indicated her desire for the city to have an ‘arena-style venue’, although the city council quickly back-tracked on these comments by saying no decision had been made about the Guild Hall or a venue.
During the council budget meeting in March the city’s opposition Lib Dem group said their stance was for the Guild Hall to be demolished and a new venue built.
This was criticised by councillor Brown as being ‘premature and cutting off a viable option for any repairs’ before any decision had been made.
Deputy leader and cabinet member for resources, councillor Martyn Rawlinson who has been overseeing the future of the Guild Hall, said initial estimates put any new venue in the region of £60million-£100million which would be ‘well beyond’ the financial means of the city council and potentially any unitary authority which replaces it and would require significant central government support and funding to achieve.
A petition set up by ourselves at Blog Preston and attracting support from both Preston and Ribble Valley MPs, as well as business, civic, social and entertainment groups in the city, has seen nearly 3,000 signatures in our call for Secretary of State for Culture, Media ands Sport Lisa Nandy to pledge a commitment to helping Preston have a major venue again.
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