Festival Republic MD Melvin Benn has unveiled the Full Capacity Plan, a national campaign aimed at restarting the leisure economy.
The incentive based scheme has been devised to increase public use of the NHS Trace App and increase the participation rates for population tests, while helping restart the live entertainment sector at full capacity provisionally from November.
Working in partnership with the government, a test would allow the public to access the entertainment and leisure sectors such as concerts and sporting events, creating a personal incentive for the public to be tested and traced in an alternative to social distancing.
Benn, promoter of Music Week Awards-nominated festivals such as Reading & Leeds and Latitude, has called for the increase of testing in the UK as leisure industries cannot operate with the measures that are currently in place.
I am proposing the Full Capacity Plan to stimulate the debate about getting back to normal opening because partial opening is financial disaster opening
Melvin Benn
Festival Republic
“We are currently in a position where the government has capacity to test 1.4 million people a week but testing less than 700k because there is no incentive," he said. "My plan is to create incentive, to test at least double the current capacity and be aiming for 12-15 million people a month being tested minimum."
The UK concerts industry has been at a standstill since March due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and Benn warned that partial reopening would be a "financial disaster" for the industry.
"I am proposing The Full Capacity Plan to stimulate the debate about getting back to normal opening rather than partial opening because partial opening is financial disaster opening," he said. "I am proposing The Full Capacity Plan because it's simple and easy, inexpensive in comparison to the subsidies that the government is currently paying and very achievable with good organisation.”
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