We are finding it harder each year to resource our Civic Sunday road closure and may need to outsource to a traffic company. However, this is quite costly!
There is a tradition of Civic parades followed by a Civic Service. Has anyone dropped the parade element of Civic Sunday and how was that received?
Thanks
Hi Harriet
Our council (Wokingham Town Council) decided a couple of years ago that they no longer wanted a civic service after the inauguration of the Mayor, so they lost the parade too!
Whilst they miss the opportunity to parade, most wanted to parade, but not go into the church, which I said they couldn’t do, so in a way, it solved another headache.
They get to parade for Remembrance, which still costs us c£2,500 for the road closure, so they do at least get to do it once a year.
Katy (Town Clerk)
Hi Harriet, It is very tricky. But we do now pay a company to do our Traffic Management, but I found the prices vary massively. We found one luckily, that was about a third of the price of some of the better known large companies. I am not sure we could have done it otherwise.
At Stratford-upon-Avon Town Council, rising costs this year have led us to discontinue the civic parade for the Mayor’s Civic Service, as well as the Sunday civic parade following the Shakespeare Birthday celebrations (the main Saturday parade continues for now). Each of these events was costing around £4,000 to deliver, covering road closures, hostile vehicle mitigation (HVM), and security. We still attend the church service but now make our own way. All has been well received, except a few past Mayors who still want us to fund the Mayors Parade - which the previous year the local Press had been asking the costs on given very few people turned up to view and I informed them we were looking at future arrangements.
On Police advice, we have also changed our HVM supplier, which has resulted in an £11,000 increase in the cost of delivering the Remembrance Day parade. These escalating costs raise difficult questions for the future and I am not sure how this would play out in the press.