Council shelves new office scheme
News article
Town hall
Fylde Council’s cabinet has taken the decision not to proceed with the scheme to provide a new town hall which the Council had approved last year.
Tightened economic circumstances mean that councillors will now press ahead with more modest improvements to the existing town hall building. The original plan, costing around £6m, was to demolish part of the existing town hall and build a major new extension. An alternative option to build a completely new town hall on the current Public Offices site on Clifton Drive South was also considered but this too would cost in the region of £6m.
Councillor David Eaves, Fylde Council leader, said: “Neither of these two new-build options is realistic in the current economic climate.
“We have to reduce spending while also maximising value for money in the services we provide. We believe, in the light of government announcements about likely reductions in public spending that now is not the right time to be committing to spending £6m on new council offices.
“In addition, the project was originally designed to be fully funded from capital receipts generated by the sale of surplus sites. But during the last 12 months the council has disposed of one of the earmarked sites separately and has taken the North Beach car park off the asset disposal list, meaning that there would no longer be enough in the pot to fund the new-build schemes.
“This new decision will lead to the retention of the Town Hall in its existing form although some urgent works will now be necessary to bring the building up to a satisfactory standard.”
Councillors have evaluated a number of different options in recent years to bring the town hall up to modern standards. The nature of the current town hall – it is a former hotel – means that it does not reach the standards anticipated by current legislation for members of the public and staff.
There is also a lot of wasted or unusable space on corridors and landings which means that teams of staff have to work in different sections of the building, leading to inefficiencies and poor communications.
A refurbished town hall, funded by disposal of the Public Offices and semi-redundant assets at St David’s Road depot and Derby Road, Wesham, would, it is hoped, include the re-creation of adequate public meeting facilities which the council has lacked in recent years.
The council’s One Stop Shop, now located in the Public Offices – along with the council’s planning officers – would be moved into the refurbished town hall which would also be made more energy efficient and improved to meet all legal requirements.
The next step will be to market the sites at the Public Offices, St David’s Road North and Derby Road, Wesham. A basic refurbishment scheme will then be drawn up within the funding generated by the sale of these assets.
Councillor Eaves added: “It is clear that a new town hall is not financially viable. However, doing nothing is also not an option.
“Refurbishing the existing town hall will cost much less than the new-build option - meaning that it should be possible to invest any surplus receipts into improving services and other facilities.”
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