Trust helps bail out museum overspend
THE CONSTRUCTION bill for the new £12 million Shetland Museum and Archives has come in over budget by £166,000, it emerged yesterday (Thursday).
The museum’s main funder, Shetland Charitable Trust, yesterday agreed to pay £83,265, half of the remaining bill.
An attempt by trustee Allison Duncan to refuse any payment towards the additional costs fell after he failed to find a seconder.
The charitable trust paid £5.9 million (50.1 per cent) towards the cost of building the award-winning museum, at Lerwick’s historic Hay’s Dock, which has far exceeded visitor forecasts since it was opened by the Prince of Wales in May 2007
Yesterday trustees agreed to pay 50.1 per cent of the overspend, leaving the building’s owner and operator Shetland Amenity Trust to find the remainder of the cash.
The meeting heard that this mean the charitable trust only had to spend an extra £14,800, as the amenity trust had retained £68,385 already provided as cash flow.
Trustees were keen to point out that the final overspend represented just 1.4 per cent of the overall project cost.
Shetland Museum and Archive was the last project in the charitable trust’s own capital programme, which came to an end in 2002 when it became clear that the trust could not afford to carry on funding major projects.
Other capital projects funded through the trust are the Market House volunteer centre and the new sporting facilities built at Lerwick’s Clickimin Leisure Complex to enable Shetland to host the 2005 Island Games, including squash courts.
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