The popular venue only opened in 2019 as part of a multi-million pound regeneration of the park, but it was in trouble from the outset
By Lucy Ashton
Levengrove Park’s Pavilion Cafe is up for private lease for five years at an annual rental of £15,000 as red-faced West Dunbartonshire Council if forced to concede they made a muck up of the financing of the hugely popular venue from the outset.
The basket case council couldn’t even spell the name they chose and persisted with using Pavilion with two L’s on the expensive signs attached to it and publicity as they shuffled it off to the Health and Social Care Partnership, using money that would have been better spent on cash-strapped social care for the elderly and places like Crosslet House Care Home in Dumbarton.
They were warned that it would be almost, if not completely, impossible to make a profit from the cafe cafe which opened in 2019 with outside grant money as part of a regeneration of the park.
But after a great deal of dithering and to-ing and fro-ing, as is their wont, the cack-handed council opened the cafe doors to a grateful public, starved for years of first class leisure facilities.
The cafe was managed by West Dunbartonshire HSCP, a hopelessly inefficient body which the SNP government foisted on the Council.
It was stuffed with officials and unelected people who made some dreadful errors as they struggled to get it off the ground and was initially chaired, predictably, by an accountant and now a local GP, and running a cafe certainly wasn’t part of its remit.
The SNP, who were running the Council at the time and their highly-paid but inexperienced officials, eventually came to the solution that their best bet in all the circumstances was to pass the buck.
They decided not to make it a responsibility of leisure services since they had already hived that off to arms-length organisation which is a council company but not really a council company, one of those strange arrangements that councils get away with.
Specialist supported employment services, with the facility used as a training kitchen for adults with learning disabilities and autism, and people recovering from mental health issues and addiction were pulled in.
It was their way of attracting sympathy to the Pavilion project rather than scorn for having yet again failed the council taxpayers.
However, earlier this year, the HSCP, which had taken off in a tangent doing things like illegally sacking a doctor during the Covid crisis, said shutting the cafe it would save the cash-strapped health and social care partnership £90,000.
West Dunbartonshire Council is now marketing the site with rental offers of more than £15,000 a year invited.
Leven councillor Jim Bollan, of the Community Party, commented: “Closure of the pavilion at Levengrove Park with the loss of jobs and training places is completely unacceptable and needs to be vigorously opposed.
“Councils are there to deliver services not profiteer. Labour know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”
The Lennox Herald quoted community campaigner Jim Moohan as commenting: “It is absurd. It’s a lovely spot within Dumbarton and a great area for families, children, dog walkers and everyone.
“I can’t for the life of me understand the decision to take away the food, drink and toilet provision in the park. It’s wrong and it’s seriously misjudged.”
Figures received following a Freedom of Information request show that the cafe made a loss of £87,342 in 2022/23 – and this was forecast to be in excess of £47,000 in 2023/24.
The cafe was used more than 3000 a month during the busy summer period, but dropped to just over 1000 in January.
A spokeswoman for West Dunbartonshire Council, whose officials refuse to speak to The Democrat, explained to the Lennox: “The Pavilion Café running costs, including staffing, was covered originally by Heritage Lottery funding for Levengrove Park improvements.”
Top picture: Then SNP Provost Willie Hendrie and SNP and Labour councillors at the official opening of the Pavilion Cafe. They pressed ahead with the project which was always destined to lose money.