On 14 April the CCT (or to give it its full name, the Churches Conservation Trust) gave a presentation to about 50 representatives of the town on the options for the future running of Sudbury Arts Centre (SAC). The CCT has been running Sudbury Arts Centre since April 2025, from early 2023 onwards they sub-contracted this out to the Bridge Project until the Bridge Project failed in March 2025.

The costs of the staff employed at SAC are currently covered by funding from the Lottery Heritage Fund and this funding ceases by the end of 2026. The CCT now needs to decide, with the agreement of the Heritage Lottery Fund, how SAC will be run once the funding ceases as clearly at this stage the costs of running SAC exceed the income it generates.

The CCT summarised the background to the renovation project and set out the reasons for the presentation and then put forward five options for running SAC of which two (carrying on with existing staffing or carry on with reduced staffing) were the preferred options. The other options were to outsource the running of SAC to a third party, running it as a village hall for hire with minimal staffing or closing the building were also shown in the presentation. All these options are the standard ones you would expect in the circumstances.

The CCT are in the early stages of the decision making process for the future running of SAC and they had not yet completed their financial forecasts for the two preferred options. As a result they were not able to give any indicative figures for the cost of running SAC or the income projections which was a shame as without this information it is difficult to evaluate the different options being presented or to discuss them in any meaningful way.

Whatever option for the future running of SAC is adopted this year the CCT has stated that they will run it for 2 to 3 years before reviewing it again. We understand that the CCT trustees will be meeting in June to make a decision on the particular option to be adopted.

At the end of the presentation there was a Q&A session which covered a wide range of subjects. We said we were committed to ensuring St Peter’s and SAC remained a community event space for the benefit of the Sudbury community as that was the basis for the renovation project to which many of those present, including ourselves, had given substantial funding. We also asked if the CCT had considered a more community based management structure with say volunteers to act as duty managers, assist in marketing and the like. This would reduce the cost of running the venue and so clearly help its future sustainability. The CCT did not respond to this. The representative from Babergh District Council asked for a budget for the venue, clearly anticipating they would be asked for provide grants at some future date for the running of the venue. The CCT did confirm during this part of the presentation that they were not considering leasing the venue to a religious group as say in St Mary at the Quay in Ipswich.

After a lot of other comments and a good few questions the meeting broke up.