Good start for TIC

The town council officially took over the TIC from West Dorset District Council in January and manager Terri Foxwell reported on how successful that’s been at the council’s finance and general purposes committee meeting on Wednesday.

She said that the first three months had proved the town was making a great success of the venture.

She said: “I am really pleased with how it has all gone. Overall the whole financial year was £33,000 up on the previous year.”

The total taken was £268,000 for the whole year.

The accounts for the first three months under the new town council umbrella saw an increase of £7,000 over the previous year.

Terri said: “We have taken, bearing in mind it is our quietest three months of the year, over £46,000 which actually over £7,000 up on last year”.

“So our first quarter within Bridport Town Council is looking really healthy. April and May are both up again over £3,000 per month”.

She said as well as continuing all our services the centre provided under the district it has added new ones.

She said: “We have also started to increase our services and ticket agencies for example we are now doing the trade waste for the Dorset Waste Partnership which is a very good income source.

“We have got new agencies such as the Children’s Festival, the Folk Festival and there are already commissions on all of those.”

At the moment the commission charged on ticket sales is the same as it was under the district – 10 per cent for commercial bookings and five five cent for community and charities events

She said: “We are talking about increasing that slightly but we still don’t want people to think they are not getting a good deal.”

She said they were talking about increasing commission on the town’s literary festival to seven and a half per cent because the TIC’s new on line booking system system is offering an advanced service.

She said the ticketing system was expected to go live on the website at the end of the month. In the meantime, she said, staff were working very hard on it, updating it daily.

She said: “It is very, very versatile”.

“It is fully adaptable to have an on line shop selling all books, maps and souvenirs. We are very very pleased with that

“It is constantly being worked on. The staff work really hard on it every day keeping it updated.”