Leaders: Bannockburn event in danger of defeat

School children at the new Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre. Picture: PA

With five months to go, Bannockburn could be heading towards a historic rout – for VisitScotland.

Faced with a clash of major events on the same weekend, ticket sales for a three-day programme to mark the 700th anniversary of the battle have been flat-lining and the event itself has been scaled back. Now the Scottish Parliament’s tourism committee has entered the field with a furious charge, accusing VisitScotland of lack of candour over emerging problems.

The anniversary celebrations have long been billed as a flagship event in the Year of Homecoming and were initially given a near-£1 million budget. Given the worldwide focus on Scotland on this anniversary, it is essential that the Scottish Parliament is kept fully and accurately informed of developments. Now, with the event being scaled back from three days to two, tourism committee chairman Murdo Fraser has written to VisitScotland protesting that the briefing it gave to MSPs on 15 January fell well short of the disclosure expected.

It is unthinkable such an iconic event should fail. But just 2,000 tickets out of 45,000 have so far been shifted by VisitScotland, who took over the event from the National Trust for Scotland precisely to give it more marketing muscle. Ticket sales, with an ambitious starting price of £20, have struggled in the face of Armed Forces Day celebrations and a major pipe band competition in Stirling on the same weekend.

Has more been bitten off than can be chewed? And has VisitScotland, with other major events to advertise and promote, found itself unable to cope? News of flat ticket sales, coming on top of the cut in budget for the Bannockburn event from £950,000 to £650,000 and now suggestions of a cover-up, indicate that the event could be heading for an embarrassing debacle.

Mr Fraser’s complaint centres on an evidence session last month when VisitScotland officials were asked to provide an update on the agency’s programme. But, he says, “no reference was made” about plans to scale back the Bannockburn Live event or the paltry ticket sales. The agency’s chief executive indicated “no change” to the Bannockburn programme for the day and that changes were only about “logistics and management”. But just a fortnight later, it emerged that the troubled event was being scaled back and ticket sales were lamentable. It is, as the letter points out, inconceivable that the need for just such a change was identified purely in the period since 15 January. For parliamentary committees to discharge their responsibilities for scrutiny and accountability, accurate information is vital.

Step one should be full disclosure of the revisions to the event, an impact assessment of the rival att