Paul McCartney doit plus de £300 000 à Liverpool

Paul McCartney: I owe Liverpool £300,000

SIR Paul McCartney owes city taxpayers more than £300,000 after being overpaid for this summer’s Liverpool Sound gig.

Macca’s production company MPL needs to repay £323,046 because the council ended up providing staffing “commitments” for which MPL was paid.

The ECHO understands MPL flagged up the debt to the council.

A document obtained by the ECHO reveals the council will end up losing money on the high-profile Capital of Culture event at Liverpool FC’s Anfield stadium.

The balance shows around £1,917,000 was spent staging the event which generated £1,874,318.

Even when Sir Paul pays up, the authority is still expecting to make a £42,800 loss.

The final balance does not include the £323,0000 the council spent on a feasibility study into the scrapped plan to stage the concert in the Salthouse Dock, or the £150,000 donations to McCartney’s Lipa and the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy Fund.

The donations, the documents reveal, came from “special budgetary provision”.

Today, opposition leaders demanded a clear breakdown of the figures and an inquiry into the financial management of the event.

But the council claimed the June concert did wonders for the city’s image, equivalent to millions of pounds’ worth of advertising exposure at home and abroad.

A Culture Company spokesman said “We’ve had to itemise every single piece of expenditure and income and we’ve had to wait for some figures to come back from the club before we could send the final bill to MPL and then their accountants can check there’s been no duplication of costs.

“The repayment should be imminent.”

Labour group leader Cllr Joe Anderson said: “We thank them for notifying us that we’ve overpaid them.

“The real issue is that we’ve put on a concert with world-class acts and we still manage to lose money.”