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Members were presented with an update report on Armed Forces Day 2026 at the October meeting of Council’s Leisure and Development Committee. The report noted that officers were currently working towards the preparation of a programme of activity for event, which will take place on Saturday, June 20, the week before the rest of UK, to ‘allow access to quality assets in advance of them being required in other parts of the UK’. At September’s Committee meeting, members considered combining Armed Forces Day – which was last held in the borough in 2018 and took place in Coleraine – with the International Air Show, in order to combine resources. Members have decided to postpone the Air Show until 2028. A £40,000 budget for this financial year was allocated to cover activities planned by council’s Commemoration and Celebration Sub-Committee. However, the report stated that the majority of the spend associated with Armed Forces Day, which has an estimated budget of £100,000, will mostly be incurred in the 2026/27 financial year. Sinn Fein Cllr Kathleen McGurk said council planned to spend a large sum on “an event that only represents one side of the community”. “I’m just concerned about the costs and how they [have] ballooned from when this motion was brought through,” she said. “I appreciate there are members on council that will want to celebrate this and when costs were originally floated there was something in and around circa £40,000, but this has expanded now into £100,000 and we don’t really have any concrete costings at this stage. “I feel as if this is progressing at pace and if we don’t take this back with a proper report to [the Leisure and Development Committee] – where we’re looking at exactly where these costs are coming from, what the intended programme of events exactly is – members are going to be shoehorned into a decision. “We’re just catapulting onto a rate-setting process in a few months time, where we’ll have set the wheels in motion so far that we can’t take a step back and look at what we’ve done.” A council officer said the cost was based on was based on Council’s tourism events and corporate services teams’ assessment of costs for a similar event in Newtonards this year, as well as “building on the previous event in Coleraine”. “They are very rough estimates [and] the final details are yet to be worked through with officers,” the officer said. “It was just an indication to advise members that the £40,000 budget was an unrealistic based on the events that are taking place currently, [and] the detail will be worked on over the next four-to-six weeks.” TUV Councillor Allister Kyle argued that council will incur “savings” due to the postponement of the Air Show until 2028, while UUP Councillor Richard Holmes agreed that the “postponement of the Air Show is actually a net gain to council and will probably result in lower rates”. He concluded: “In terms of Armed Forces Day being seen as for one side of the community, it doesn’t have to be. “There’s plenty of Irish people fought and died in the British Armed Forces, and nobody is lining up there to check your background, religion, politics, or anything else when you come to it. “Armed Forces Day is probably one of the best events Coleraine’s had in the last ten years; it was an absolutely terrific day with massive crowds out for it. Wherever it comes to, it’s going to be a very, very good event.”
