CONFIRMED: Sugar will reopen and Extravs will happen if restrictions are lifted

Lancaster University Students’ Union’s President and Vice-President for Union Development have confirmed to The Tab Lancaster that it is their hope that The Sugarhouse will reopen in June 2021, and that JCRs “will be able to hold Extravs as normal.”

This comes after the Prime Minister revealed the roadmap out of lockdown, which outlines ambitions to have all Covid-19 restrictions lifted by June 21st.

The news will be a pleasant surprise for many Lancaster students, with the Students’ Union previously committing to only reopening the nightclub in September 2021 as a result of the pandemic. LUSU President, Oliver Robinson, confirmed via Twitter that it was not the SU’s intention to reopen the club as a sit down venue because when this was done during the local lockdowns of Michaelmas Term it was not financially viable. When asked: “Would [The Sugarhouse] only open if it were able to operate as a club or would the Union reconsider the bar/sit down aspect that was attempted in freshers’ week?” Robinson replied:

Speaking to The Lancaster Tab, Robinson said: “We will be opening The Sugarhouse as soon as it’s viable to do so. The reason we believed September ’21 is because that’s the earliest we thought that we’d be able to open normally. If we’re able to open normally, then we will do so!”

The Sugarhouse has not been open as a nightclub since March 2020

LUSU VP Union Development, Atree Ghosh, told The Lancaster Tab: “Our stance on The Sugarhouse has been to reopen as soon as financially viable. This means being able to open at full capacity. The government has said this may happen in June, but our stance is whenever it happens we will open, whether that be sooner or later.”

We asked the SU President and VP Union Development whether Lancaster University JCRs were going to be planning for end-of-year Extravs – the annual college celebrations that take place in the final weeks of summer term – Oliver Robinson told us: “As long as restrictions are lifted on schedule, there is good reason to believe that we will be able to hold Extravs as normal.”

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Atree Ghosh added: “JCRs haven’t started planning Extravs centrally speaking yet, however I’m sure each JCR have had some thoughts themselves. Given the recent announcement at the start of this week, the intention is to set up a working group with all JCRs and SU staff and officers to outline some possible plans. Obviously the roadmap set out by the government explains that all restrictions should be lifted, however this is no guarantee, so we’ll be planning for several scenarios.

“Finally, given our financial circumstances this year we will have to plan carefully to ensure that the events can fund themselves through ticket sales like previous years so that no profit is made but at the same time the events don’t necessarily cost the SU anything additional that would take away from other student services.”

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