Council votes to continue carnival for next summer

They voted by 8-5 to stage the community event next June.

They had been recommended by their events committee to hand over the organisation of the parade to another group. But Cllr Jeanette Warr (LD, Hotham) said the council should not walk away from it.

“We should continue to run the carnival for 2014 and look to set up a carnival committee immediately to organise and oversee it for future years,” adding community groups would be invited to join the committee to help to improve the carnival.

“If, after 2014, we need to look at this again, then so be it.

“But I feel we need to do this for next year because I don’t think the carnival will continue if we don’t go forward in this way.”

Cllr David Meagher (LD, Orchard) said it was too big a change to suddenly remove the council from the carnival’s organisation.

Cllr David Edwards (C, Hotham) said it was wrong to hand over the carnival when the council was talking about promoting Bognor.

Town council clerk Glenna Frost said one, out of two organisations, had maintained its interest in taking on the carnival.

Cllr Adam Cunard (I, Pevensey) warned the council had to ease the pressure on its staff by cutting its activities.

“We have got to cut down the amount of time staff are working. There are massive financial implications if we do not do that,” he said.

Cllr Roger Nash (L, Pevensey) said enabling another organiser to put on the carnival could make it bigger and better to reverse the decline since the council revived it five years ago.

He said support to the new organiser should increase from £3,500 to £5,000 to help achieve that.

Cllr Sandra Daniells (I, Pevensey) said: “I have looked around other towns. We are the exception in running our own carnival.”