Christchurch City Council owned venues and events company Vbase Limited has today released a proposal to reduce permanent staff by 60 percent

This is a direct response to Covid-19 and the associated public health response which stopped events from 17 March resulting in a 100 percent loss of revenue.

While the outlook remains uncertain, we anticipate border restrictions, and public assembly and social distancing requirements to have a prolonged impact on the events market. When venues can reopen for business, the longer term recessionary economic outlook is also expected to affect event attendance and therefore event viability. Pent up public demand for events is not expected to be sufficient to offset these negative forces.

Vbase has assessed this environment and determined there will be few if any events until later this year. Recovery to pre Covid-19 levels will take at least 12 to 18 months..

This position and outlook has a profound impact on the Vbase business and people. In the short term all staff have been retained with the support of the Government Employer Wage Subsidy and agreement to reduce pay by 20 percent. While this has enabled us to keep the team together until 19 June, Vbase needs to reduce in size given the long term outlook and anticipated slow recovery.

This means Vbase is proposing to disestablish 45 full and part time positions representing a reduction in permanent staffing of 60 percent. It is proposed to retain all casual positions, however people in these positions are unlikely to be allocated work until October 2020 at the earliest.

The Vbase Board of Directors says “This is a distressing time for all, particularly for those people who are faced with leaving our company. Many of these people have highly valued specialist skills and will be a loss to Vbase.” We ask media and the public to respect the need for us to focus on supporting our people as we work through the proposal for change together.

The company will make no further comment at this time and will release a further statement when final decisions are made.

Vbase Limited is a Council Controlled Organisation that owns and manages Christchurch Town Hall and Horncastle Arena on behalf of the people of Christchurch and manages Air Force Museum of NZ, Orangetheory Stadium and Hagley Oval on behalf of other venue owners.

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