City hopes to roll the red carpet out for Baftas

Councillors are hoping a new conference centre, together with an Olympic size swimming pool and ice skating rink, can be built in the city centre in time for the City of Culture celebrations in 2017.

Derry-Londonderry hosted the Turner Prize last year, but city councillors hope that a new venue will allow them to put on the Baftas, for what would be its first outing to a city outside London.

For the past nine years they have been held at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden: the build takes a full fours days and demands a crew of 350. Coun Phil Webster said: “They are contractually obliged to run this from Hull as part of City of Culture, but it is up to us to get venues in place. Quite clearly we are not going to get A-listers if they have to stay in a B&B on Beverley Road.”

The news surfacing amid other ambitious projects including bringing HMS Illustrious to Hull bought the sceptics out in their droves. A typical comment on one website was: “Another jam tomorrow, fairy tale.”

Hull Council is making 450 people redundant and is facing £48m cuts, but Coun Webster said money could be raised through prudential borrowing and sponsorship.

Paul Dennis of Hull Independent Producers, a start up film production company, said it would be great to have the Baftas in Hull - which was home to J. Arthur Rank, who produced some of the finest films of the 1940s, including The Red Shoes (1948).