Helen Bates is FD of the Birmingham Hippodrome but unlike some theatres, she's got no public money to play with. So it's all down to teamwork to make sure the show goes on.

When we asked Helen Bates, FD of the Birmingham Hippodrome, when would be a good time for us to visit her, she suggested early February. The reason? Jerry Springer: The Opera was in town, and the FD was expecting protesters to make their presence felt.

As it turned out, the people of Birmingham managed to contain their outrage the day we dropped by, and the performance passed off peacefully. (Bang goes our “free speech” photo op...) So how does she keep one of the UK’s oldest and most venerable theatres ticking over?

9.30AM Bates has been in since 9am, and by the time we arrive she’s already done the key admin tasks for the day, and is onto the first piece of pressing business. “We have two scenic lifts front-of-house which have never really worked properly since we reopened,” the FD sighs. “So we’re in discussions with the main contractor to get that sorted out. We’re about to sign an agreement to refurbish them, but it’s going to take about five months to do it. So that means they’re going to be out of action, right through the run of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Perhaps the flying car can take the audience to the upper levels...

The Birmingham Hippodrome is the largest theatre outside London. It recently underwent a £39m refit that involved it closing for two years â“ not great for cash flow. But although the theatre gets no operating subsidies, the refit was partly funded (to the tune of £25m) by the Arts Council, and now the complex is more modern than any you’ll find in a provincial theatre. It houses not only the main auditorium, but dance studios and the Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB), too.

We have a quick tour before Bates’s first meeting. The main auditorium has 1,800 seats â“ impressive, even when empty. We try to keep out of the way of the Jerry Springer stage manager as she gets the place set up for the matinee performance.
The Hippodrome is a “receiving house” â“ it doesn’t put on its own productions. “So balancing ‘creative aspirations’ with the bottom line is not as much of an issue here as it might be in the Birmingham Royal Ballet, for example,” says the FD. “There, you’ll have an artistic director who’ll want the best quality in everything, the most rehearsals and so on. It’s more commercial here.”

10.45AM Anna Williams, FD of the BRB, drops by. The two need to iron out how to fit the company’s residency into the Hippodrome’s schedules later in the year. You get the feeling that Bates is perfectly suited to the role of scheduler-in-chief, and it becomes clear that her experience of running theatres is invaluable in this business.

“We’re a lyric theatre, which means we’re designed to host opera, ballet and large scale musicals,” she explains. “And fortunately you can make a lot of money out of those. Plus the opera and the ballet companies are part-publicly funded so you can keep the ticket prices at a realistic level and we do well out of those shows.”

Williams is keen to get her company into the best dates; Bates needs to maximise every timeslot’s revenue potential.âˆSo this meeting is only the first of many over the next few weeks to determine the final schedule for the coming year.

11.30AM We head to the boardroom for a meeting on energy use with facilities manager Mike Croke. A lot’s changed since the redevelopment. “We managed to make quite a bit of money each year â“ especially on shows like Les Miserables and Phantom,” she says. “But at that point, the running costs of the theatre were relatively low. After the refit, and with the increased scale of the operation, operating costs have gone up two or threefold.”

Having to heat (and cool) the expanded premises has bumped up the fuel bills. The auditorium alone uses the mains equivalent of nine houses. Of course, rising energy prices can’t be helped, so it’s up to Bates and Croke to manage them as best they can â“ the bills have increased from £185,000 in 2004 to £300,000 in 2005. No easy task, then.

12.15PM Finance manager Raj Sanghera drops in to discuss the financials system. Bates is keen to get a date in the diary with software provider Sun Systems (SS) in order to work out where they can get more out of the product. Sanghera’s the expert on IT; Bates is relying on him to push through her plans to get the business more “integrated”.

“The box office, catering and so on are separate from the finance system, so we’ve got to join them up,” the FD says. “Raj has done a lot of that work and improved things greatly. When I arrived three years ago there wasn’t anyone with that kind of systems training. Everyone was just doing their little bit and it wasn’t efficient. So we’re trying to get them all on the same track. It’s a bigger system than anything I’ve used before and we should be using all the bells and whistles if we can, to get the best out of the package.”

They’re keen to open up the BACS payments functionality and tighten up on invoice processing. There’s also a board meeting scheduled in a few weeks’ time, so the FD and her finance manager want make sure they’re on the same page in terms of the management accounts.

12.45PM We head to the Green Room â“ the Hippodrome’s impressive “staff canteen”. It’s quiet: the performance of Jerry Springer is about to start and most of the cast are preparing, not eating. Oddly, it’s not remotely “luvvie” around here, although Bates does reminisce happily about the lunch she shared with Joe Pasquale â“ he was a big hit in panto here.

1.15PM Box office manager Stephen Ebanks stops by to give the FD an update on yesterday’s IT snafu. The booking system had gone down for a few hours, and Ebanks was in the office until after midnight fixing it. I get the feeling Bates is frustrated by the IT infrastructure, which is run by Birmingham Arts IT (BAIT), a third-party contractor that works for several of the city’s arts organisations. The past year has seen discussions on how best to manage IT for the future; BAIT’s position is now “on the agenda”.

“I want to talk to Stephen about our contract with the city council to use this network until March 2008,” says Bates. “In terms of systems implementations, that’s not far away. So he’s been to a conference in Barcelona on ticketing systems to see what’s out there. The ramification for the other venues in the BAIT network if we do look outside are that they won’t have the economies of scale that we bring. But things have moved on. We’ve had a few years of frustration in not being able to forge ahead. But now we can make the investment ourselves.”

She may have to look abroad for the right solution: ticketing system providers in the UK appear to be losing ground to foreign competition. And when you consider that between 30 and 40 per cent of bookings are now made online, getting the right technology in place is vital.

2.15PM The FD grabs half an hour to go through the latest returns from the theatre’s bars and restaurants. Ticket sales are the main revenue stream, but ancillary income plays a vital role as well. She makes the same point several times during our day together â“ it’s imperative to get every last pound of revenue out of the operation in order to keep the place going.

Once the numbers have been checked, it’s onto staff matters. HR is at the heart of Bates’s remit. It’s not something she’s schooled in, but help may soon be at hand. “Since I’ve been here, we’ve had a restructure â“ HR wasn’t really being covered,” she says. “We don’t have a dedicated HR person even now. But we are planning to appoint someone in April, not just to deal with issues like hiring and firing, but the more day-to-day stuff like getting the staff agreement up to date, a new dispute resolution procedure and to cover any statutory issues.”

Staff numbers are obviously up after the refurb, to about 75 permanent employees. And the Hippodrome does employ a large number of casuals â“ they need more bar staff during sell-out shows, for example.âˆBut a big driver for the HR push is compliance. “It’s increased dramatically in the last few years and we need to make sure we’re on the right side of it,” says Bates.

“I was at a seminar yesterday and we heard a lawyer give a great speech on this stuff. These are real issues: you can be taken to tribunal, not because of bad intentions, but simply if procedures aren’t followed. We find that now we’re having to take legal advice every step of the way just to make sure we’re doing it right. So we want to appoint someone with more experience to cope with that.”

3PM Bates has called a meeting with Justin Lewis, sales executive with PC manufacturer Evesham. The FD has been reading up on employee benefits in Real Finance (see last issue) and is thinking of going in for the government’s Home Computing Initiative (HCI). The scheme allows employees to buy PCs (or PDAs) in instalments, and with no VAT or BIK tax to pay.

“We wanted to introduce some payroll benefits where we could offer something to the employees at little or no cost to us,” she says. Lewis demonstrates a dedicated web portal Hippodrome staff could use to choose and order the kit they want.

“With HCI, the staff get a saving on VAT,”âˆsays Bates. “And because we don’t purchase the PCs outright, there won’t be a financing charge. So we’re waiting on Evesham for the package â“ and then we can say what the effect on take-home pay will be. We’ve got safeguards built in so that if someone leaves within three years, they pay the balance remaining on the PC.”

Chris Gardner of BAIT joins the FD for the last 15 minutes of the meeting. The network provider is considering offering HCI to its staff, too, so he’s come to get the lowdown. Everyone seems happy and Bates decides to go forward with the scheme.

4PM It’s the last meeting of the day, and probably the most important. Michael Halldearn of the Hippodrome’s insurance broker, Alexander Forbes, is in for a pre-renewal chat. In companies that manage public spaces (and public hazards), risk management looms large, so the FD wants to go through a number of issues with the broker to make sure they’re all covered.

With greater capacity for conferences, entertaining and larger-scale productions, in theory the risks have increased at the Hippodrome. Mind you, Halldearn is confident they can exploit a softening market. Bates has a rigorous approach to the issue. “We ask ourselves, do we treat it, tolerate it or insure against it?” she says. “We have to look at a lot of issues that might effect whether a show goes ahead â“ which at the end of the day, is the main risk. Most of those, like failure of the safety curtain, are all under maintenance contracts. We insure everything else.”

Halldearn and Bates are old hands at this, and the broker explains a few points on new types of cover to the FD (business interruption, for one). Directors’ and officers’ are also issues. The Hippodrome is actually a charity, with a trading subsidiary to handle the ancillary operations and also a Development Trust to handle fundraising. Bates has had a query from one of the trustees about D&O cover, so Halldearn agrees to look into it.

5PM We’re nearing the end of the day. The FD has a few admin tasks to clear up, and she’ll be on her way. Already the place is humming with activity for tonight’s performance. She’s looking forward to checking the receipts for Jerry Springer, which should prove a crowd-puller after its London success and TV profile. After that, it’s back to the business of ensuring that the show goes on. There may be no applause, but Bates is a backstage success.

Ars gratia artis? Not with bills to pay!

Helen Bates is one of a rare breed: an arts FD who doesn’t have to deal with the ups and downs of public funding. The Hippodrome mostly pays for itself as a stand-alone regional theatre. “Ticketing income is shared out with the visiting company, on a 75/25 split in their favour. They’re taking the risk, producing the show, putting capital investment into it. They’re paying their company’s wages and so on. So of every pound taken at the box office, we only keep 25p. Mind you, the booking fee â“ six per cent of the ticket price â“ is all ours. It’s a contentious issue with our customers. But we have to say to them ‘we’re not funded by the local authority, you’re not paying for us through your council tax’ â“ this is a business.”

Bates is still a keen networker, and regularly meets up with other FDs in the arts sector to swap notes. “But we haven’t got a venue of a comparable status here in Birmingham, so we go and visit other places, in London and elsewhere, to see how they do things to make sure that we’re at the top end of best practice,” she says.

“We’ve got really good relationships now. I’ve been doing it for years, meeting up with other FDs either singly or in a group. It’s hugely beneficial to see how other people do what they do. So we’ve done exchanges with front-of-house staff from Symphony Hall, for example. That all helps us stay on top. But it’s also about making sure we’re providing the best service. We haven’t been sent to the Sydney Opera House yet... but we live in hope.”

Where next...

www.birminghamhippodrome.com - The theatre’s homepage
www.jerryspringertheopera.com - See what the fuss is all about
http://snipurl.com/96rq - The lowdown on HCI

Tags: lyric theatre, fd, birmingham hippodrome, birmingham royal ballet, helen bates, arts fd, theatre,

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