MSP's restaurant to close in evenings over 'unacceptable' £50,000 subsidy

Parliament: Bosses plan to create a 'smaller-scale, lower-cost evening lounge' which will serve light meals and drinks.STV

The Scottish Parliament's restaurant and bar is to close in the evenings because of "unacceptable and unsustainable" running costs, Holyrood's housekeeping body has announced.

The restaurant receives a subsidy of £50,000 a year to run the evening service.

Members of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB), responsible for running the Holyrood building, agreed that this amount "cannot be sustained".

The evening service at the restaurant can serve 16,000 covers over a year but in 2011-12 only 1236 were served.

In 2008-09, £104,000 was spent on wages and other overheads plus a further £30,000 on food. But the restaurant took in just £54,000, in part because of the heavily-subsidised dishes.

A starter of pigeon with white beans cost just £2.20 while a main course of salmon with potatoes and cucumber relish came in at £4.80. And a duo of smoked salmon and beetroot lax with potato blini, herb cream cheese, capers and spring onions was only £1.40.

Scottish Parliament chiefs plan to create a "smaller-scale, lower-cost evening lounge" which will serve light meals and drinks, expected to come into place when MSPs return to Holyrood after summer recess.

An email to Holyrood staff said: "The SPCB is agreed that the subsidy of £50,000 for the evening service in the Members' restaurant is not acceptable and cannot be sustained."

Under a plan for an alternative, transforming an office area in Holyrood into a lounge is estimated to cost SPCB £75,000, with outsourcing firm Sodexo, which does the catering, also investing £50,000.

Once the MSPs' restaurant and bar is closed in the evenings, it could then host events and receptions which the SPCB says could bring in significant income for the Parliament. It is be possible the money for the new lounge can be recouped in two years.

A Scottish Parliament spokesman said closing the restaurant and bar in the evenings is "part of an overall strategy to eliminate, over time, any subsidy for the evening catering service".

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