Local councillors are to hold a meeting next week with a view to setting up a new trust to manage and operate the De Valence Pavilion.

The facility in Tenby's Upper Frog Street, which is owned by the town council, has been closed for hire since the previous trust that ran the building went into voluntary liquidation in May of last year.

Back in August, the town council decided to market the building through a local estate agent, with tenders of interest invited to submit outlines of their proposals to run the facility, either on a leasehold or freehold basis.

However, despite interest from national pub chain J.D. Wetherspoon to purchase the building and the owners of local aquarium Silent World, to lease the facility, councillors agreed earlier this month to re-open the building for hire, while discussions over its future were still ongoing,

At that time, they stated that the options for disposal of the building failed to adequately represent the level of investment return the domestic rate payers of Tenby, who fund the premises through their council tax, would expect.

At Tuesday night's meeting of the council, members voted in favour of setting up a new trust to run the building, despite the Mayor calling for a further period of public consultation.

"It's such an important issue, we need to have some form of public meeting," stressed Clr. Mrs. Julie Evans. "There are lots of issues that haven't been addressed. We made a resolution to explore the interest in the building and I don't think we've done that fully. The owners of Silent World haven't even had the chance to make a proper presentation to the council yet, for example.

"My understanding was that this council would look into forming a trust or a PLC so that if the doors were opened again for hire, it would act like a community hall, to show here's the venue, and people would pay to hire it and everything would be down to that hirer.

"May I remind councillors of the previous trust that ran the facility, and how £47,000 was spent a year on trying to run it and that still wasn't enough to make the De Valence work.

"We made the decision back then that if the previous trust couldn't keep it going, then neither could we, and that it would be cheaper to close the doors to the building, which is what happened," explained Clr. Mrs. Evans.

When discussing the option of establishing a new organisation to manage the De Valence at a previous meeting, it was revealed that there would be a number of options available to such a trust with either charitable or social objectives that would potentially enable rate relief to be obtained.

"If we can find a way to run the facility with reduced rates, then I believe we should," responded Clr. Mrs. Christine Brown. "We've not been offered the right money, so I propose we don't put it up for sale or lease at present.

"We have never said as a council that we definitely want to get rid of the De Valence building, so I don't know where that idea came from. We just put the feelers out to see what options were available; we didn't make a firm consideration.

"It's a community building and it's got to fulfil what it's for and if we don't make a decision soon, then there will be a lot of events that our town will lose.

"Tenby is doing badly enough as it is and if we don't do something to help the town's business, then we are not doing our job as a town council," she continued.

The Mayor said she thought the people of Tenby should know the facts of the offers the council had received.

"Short of putting a for sale sign outside of the building, that is the route we have gone down to explore our options.

"The building is only of value to a narrow market and unfortunately we've only had one expression of interest so far to buy the building," explained Clr. Mrs. Evans.

Clr. Mrs. Sue Lane believed it was unfair for people to comment on what was best for the future of the building when no-one knew the figures the town council had been offered, while Clr. Mrs. Caroline Thomas claimed that the financial offers that had been put on the table for the facility were "insulting" to the council and the people of Tenby.

"People don't know the full picture. If we were to decide that we firmly wanted to sell the building, then we put a proper price on it, if we want to lease it, then it needs to be a lease that suits us, too, and not just the people who want to lease it," said Clr. Mrs. Lane.

"A new trust will not be in place to emulate what went before, we didn't close the De Valence, they went bust, we were left then with no choice but to close the doors

"If it's going to be used as some sort of community hall, it's still going to need a management team to run it," she added.

Clr. Mike Evans said that if a new trust was set up, then that committee could run the building while it was still being decided what to do with it in the long term.

"All matters to decide on how to go about running the facility are there on an agenda to be determined, we just need a committee in place to make a decision and also to discuss how the day to day running of the place can be determined," he said.

"There still needs to be a period of consultation, but it makes sense to have a trust in place until we decide long term what is best for the building," added Clr. Evans.

Town clerk, Mr. Andrew Davies, told members that he had already had four to five enquiries about hiring the De Valence for events since the council announced that the building would re-open on April 1, and that a lot of issues needed to be decided and addressed as a matter of urgency, before the doors to the facility could be reopened.

Councillors agreed to hold a meeting on Monday to set up a trust and elect members to sit on a sub-committee to run the De Valence.