A TAXPAYER-FUNDED event attended by fewer than 1,000 people cost nearly £30,000 to run, it has been revealed.

Colchester 2020, funded by the town’s main public bodies, spent £29,738.46 on its summer assembly and a family festival in the High Street in June.

The sum is roughly six times what volunteers raised to stage the Colchester Free Festival in September, which drew about 15,000 people to Castle Park.

Don Quinn, who staged the town’s oyster festival for less than £2,000, condemned Colchester 2020 for wasting money.

He said: “For £30,000, we could have put on three Party in the Park concerts, with fireworks and free entry, for 15,000 or 20,000 people.

“Instead, we have got an appalling travesty of a get-together that only a few hundred people went to and hardly anyone knew about.”

The 2020 assemblies are designed to inform business leaders, community groups and the general public of plans for the future of Colchester.

They are also a chance for partners, including Colchester Council, Colchester Garrison and Essex County Council, to canvas views on issues, like planning and transport policy.

Several assemblies are usually held each year, but this time the organisation decided to use the whole budget on the June event.

A marquee was set up in Castle Park to host a business breakfast and a series of talks, and the family fun evening was run in High Street in a bid to pull in a wider cross-section of the public.

Costs included nearly £1,000 for catering, £7,000 for printing and £2,620 for a video, which can be viewed on the Colchester 2020 website.

The Mercury Theatre, whose director Dee Evans was 2020 chairman at the time, was paid £4,159.44 to book theatre acts and entertainers.

Clare Urwin, a freelance public relations consultant and the main event organiser, was paid £10,708.26.

Richard Aldridge, acting 2020 chairman and chief executive of Colchester Citizens Advice Bureau, said: “We took a different approach this year. Rather than individual events, we brought everything together.

“Normally, the events are mainly attended by key interest groups and stakeholders and our aim was really to give the general public the opportunity to just drop in.

“It may seem a lot of money to spend on one event, but it was actually a series of events, at different times of the day, which were designed to reach out to different groups of people.”

Mr Aldridge added the family fun day had been a “catalyst” because it had inspired the Destination Colchester community group to consider voluntarily staging regular events of a similar nature.

Mercury director Mrs Evans said it had not profited from the assembly.

She said: “We organised the acts and the staging in the street for nothing, so all the money went to pay the street entertainers.”

Colchester 2020’s annual budget is raised through donations from its major partners, including Colchester and Essex county councils, the police, and local health trusts.