Anger at plan to axe Hornsea’s only entertainment centre

East Riding Council says Hornsea Floral Hall, which is due to celebrate its centenary next year, is losing £100,000 a year and there isn’t enough funding to build a replacement next to the leisure centre.

They want to pull the plug on the scheme and spend £1.2m of the £2.6m set aside on refurbishing the leisure centre and turning the site into a car park.

Coun Barbara Jefferson urged residents to come to County Hall in Beverley next Tuesday to show members of the council’s Cabinet how they felt.

She said: “There’s a great deal of anger. The very least they could do would be to keep it open for another year.”

Daphne Eland, who moved to Hornsea with her husband from Bradford a year ago, joined dozens of others to protest outside the venue yesterday: “I am absolutely incensed. All we have left is the Floral Hall. There are some fantastic shows, a disco for teenagers, clairvoyants, a national music festival, just to name a few. “People won’t want to come here for a holiday, because there’s nothing to do apart from the slot machines.”

East Riding Council said the town council’s new £550,000 community centre on Newbegin made “it hard to justify investing further public money funding for a competing replacement public venue.”

It said “times have become more difficult since the recession with far less external funding available.”