Put very simply, a restoration levy is an additional charge added to your ticket price which is intended to go straight to the venue for investment.
We’ve always decided against adding this charge to your ticket price. We’re in the minority. Most venues of our size, old and new (and much smaller) add a restoration levy or similar charge.
Tickets are already a big investment, especially if you’re a serial gig-goer, and another charge is a bit of a wind-up. We get it.
So why then have we now added this annoying charge to your ticket price? Firstly, we’ve kept it low – it’s £1.50.
Let us first say, thank you. It’s genuinely a game-changer for us. Say 150,000 ticket buyers come through the venue each year – that’s £225k. What about 200,000? 250,000? Each £1.50 stacks up very quickly and enables us to do so much.
Troxy is a Grade II listed building. With that comes a huge amount of responsibility. Everything we do in the venue has to be considered, investigated, planned, carefully signed off and sometimes we even need to get planning permission just to paint a wall!
That also means expensive.
Working with the Theatres Trust, Arts Council and Tower Hamlets council this year, we’ve really come to understand what an incredibly important historical venue Troxy is. It’s not that we didn’t understand before, but now we really get how important it is to other people too. We’ve always loved the place, but the passion and commitment that others show to protecting spaces like Troxy is inspiring.
So, again, why have we added another charge to your ticket? To protect the venue and keep investment at a high level. Troxy is an incredibly expensive venue to run. Our repairs and maintenance budget pre-covid was around £200,000 a year, before we even touched unforeseen such as leaks, plant breaking and urgent repairs.
That didn’t leave a lot for investment in demonstrable and exciting improvements. Covid has made that situation even worse. We had to keep spending that high level of money on repairs whilst closed.
We’ve stretched ourselves thin now – and further investment is going to need outside help. We want to continually improve Troxy as a place for this and the next generation to love going to gigs, event and creating experiences in. We want to make improvements you can see and feel when you visit Troxy each time.
This is where you come in. Every single restoration levy we receive from you will go into improving the venue and protecting it for another 88 years.
We will be 100% transparent where every penny of your restoration fee is spent. We’ll do a yearly report, published on our website, setting out what we have achieved and which future projects we’re allocating it to.
We know it’s another annoying ticketing charge, but thank you so much for paying it.
