Youth charity Worksop Sea Cadets slapped with business levy bill

Worksop Sea Cadets are a youth charity, however the building they use is listed as a business, therefore it is subject to have to pay the North Notts BID Levy.

Sue Pemberton, chair of Worksop Sea Cadets, said: “We have to raise all our funds ourselves in order to keep the unit open and running to enable us to deliver the sea cadet experience to children from all walks of life in Worksop and surrounding areas.

“Although £260 pounds does not seem like a lot of money it is a lot of money to us.

“As a charity we have to depend on monthly subscriptions from the cadets which are £12.50 per month and we meet Monday and Thursday nights from 6.30pm to 9pm as well as monies raised by the cadets themselves be it from bag packs, raffles, tombolas and quiz nights.

“All the cadets, staff and committee work extremely hard with very few resources. The less money we have in the bank means there’s less to help cadets attend courses and improve their live skills.

“At the end of the day we are not a business, we do not pay rates and any improvements made by the BID in the town centre like cctv and free wifi will not add to our unit at all.”

A spokesman from BID said: “We understand and appreciate that some businesses may not be happy about receiving what they see as another bill.

“This was much more pertinent a year ago when the first bills went out, and we have found that this is mainly because a lot of people didn’t understand what the BID was about or how it can benefit the area.

“We have spoken to or visited all of our BID members and our BID Ambassadors are out and about on a daily basis to update them on what is happening with the BID and the services that they can access.

“We appreciate that we can’t please everybody all of the time but we give our assurances that we will do our very best to ensure that our members can maximise the benefits.”