A THEATRE run by a charity is warning other businesses after it ‘survived a substantial threat’ from its payment service provider.

Lighthouse Poole is one of the UK’s largest multi-venue arts centres outside of London, and sells more than 200,000 tickets a year thrown Worldpay.

However, on November 7 it was suddenly left without means to take payments when the global banking company switched off its services.

Thousands of people had booked to attend concerts by Gareth Malone and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, as well as performances of Séan Aydon’s acclaimed new production of Frankenstein and several cinema screenings.

Lighthouse staff were forced to take ‘rapid emergency action’ to restore tickets selling and protect the business and reputation during a key week in the year.

It was said Worldpay informed venues it would take several days to restore the service, which made the Lighthouse turn to its box office service partner, Spektrix.

Staff were able to set up a new payment system in just four days, and went live before Worldpay restores its services.

Elspeth McBain, chief executive of Lighthouse, said: “This dreadful mistake meant that in the middle of a busy period Lighthouse was unable to trade, presenting a substantial risk to our business.

“Fortunately, our brilliant team coped magnificently, reacting with characteristic calm and professionalism to establish a temporary PayPal facility that enabled us to continue selling tickets on all shows, and maintaining effective communications to customers as well as our promoters and artists.

“But I cannot understand how Worldpay was able to cut off a charity from its income with no warning, explanation, or information on how it might reactivate its account. Our client manager was on a day off and we were denied any communication with the compliance department that ordered the deactivation of our account.

“Even when Worldpay realised and admitted the mistake it took a weekend and another working day before the service was restored. In the meantime we had worked with our ticketing software provider Spektrix who were brilliant in integrating a new payments service very swiftly.”

Following the incident, Lighthouse is warning other venues that such issues should be included in their risk register.

“This happened, through no fault of ours, during a routine review, and judging by the responses received from other organisations to our social media posts this is not the only time.

“Organisations in all sectors need to be aware of this.

“With the help of other partners and our wonderful colleagues, Lighthouse has been able to limit the impact on our business and that of our promoters, but it has been a real shocker that any business can be put at such risk.”

A spokesperson for Worldpay said: "As a policy, we do not provide comment on individual customers.

"In line with industry-wide regulatory requirements for all Financial Services firms to protect our customers, we are required to periodically update customer information.

"We take our regulatory obligations seriously and provide notices to our customers in advance to let them know when information is needed to help avoid disruptions to their services.

"We work diligently to engage with our customers to meet these requirements and avoid disruptions, often including multiple notices and attempts to contact them."