Faulty smoke detectors delay reopening at Havant’s Spring Arts & Heritage Centre

Sophie Fullerlove, director and chief executive, was hoping to open the museum and café at the start of August as part of a phased return, post-COVID closure.

Now she is left without any definite reopening date on the horizon.

However, the venue has now released its programme for September and October, with a first event on September 2.

“So we are really, really hoping we will be able to open by September 1.”

Sophie admits it has been hugely frustrating and hard to take: “Everything was wonderful. We were getting ready to announce our opening date to all our supporters and VIPs and funders to tell them the great news – and then we had our fire alarms tested. Half of our smoke detectors were not working, and we are obviously not allowed to reopen until they are all sorted. It’s an issue with the voltage going through to the detectors.”

The team continued to check the detectors all the way through lockdown, but now they’ve stumbled at the final hurdle: “We can’t just change them. We don’t own the building. It is owned by the council, and it is their contractors that need to do it which adds another layer to the complexity. The system is very old, and the contractor doesn’t have much time. It is just one of those things. But I have to say the council have been very supportive and have been trying their best to get things sorted.”

But the upshot is that – for the moment – The Spring can’t open and nobody knows when it can.

“It’s really, really bad luck, and it is nothing we could have done anything about. We are putting on pressure where we can, but it is not our call. We have just got to hope that we will be open by September. We have launched our September and October programme, and we want to be able to have time to sell the tickets.

“We just wanted to have a lovely August getting used to being back. We wanted to open the café and the museum and for our exhibitions to be open. We wanted to come back because we miss our audiences, but the most important thing is to be safe. We had everything ready. We had the signage up. We have got our face masks. We were all ready to open.

“But we will do everything we can to open by September 1 because we have got a date on September 2. We have found it really hard because we had worked out so carefully all our plans for a phased return.

“We were risk-assessed. We were ready, and we were just about to push the button… and now this, just because the fire alarm had decided to give up the ghost. It has been interesting, to say the least!”

But there has been good support from the performers for September and October – people prepared to work with the reduced capacity that social distancing will bring. The old capacity was 137; the new socially-distanced capacity will be 36 – which means there are loads of shows which clearly aren’t going to be financially viable.

“But we have got people who are prepared to come and perform for us to such a small audience. They are not going to be making very much money, but they are prepared to come because they want to support the organisation.”

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