Town hall refurbishment will now cost £2m more

A CONTROVERSIAL plan to restore and redevelop Maesteg Town Hall is now set to cost up to £2m more than originally thought.

The additional cost has been revealed in a report which has been presented to Bridgend County Borough Council’s cabinet and which will also go to full council today.

It states the scheme is now estimated to cost £5-6m, up from the original estimate of £4-5m to reflect the more detailed design work and analysis undertaken.

But the full cost will not be known until tenders are submitted.

Written by the corpo- rate director of communities Mark Shephard and the interim head of finance Gill Lewis, the report also sets out the various grants and funding streams the authority intends to use to pay for the redevelopment.

The council hopes the largest chunk of money, £2.86m, will come from the European-funded Welsh Government Buildings for the Future programme.

A detailed business case for funding is scheduled to be submitted by April at the latest.

Bridgend council also wants to secure £508,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The stage one bid for this was resubmitted in November after an unsuccessful bid earlier in 2017.

The report states: “If approved, Heritage Lottery will release £96,800 of grant funding to enable further detailed design work and remaining surveys to be undertaken prior to the second stage submission later in 2018.”

Awen Cultural Trust, which manages the town hall and other leisure facilities across Bridgend county, is expected to secure half a million pounds in external funding.

Bridgend council will allocate half a million pounds from its capital programme and it intends to ring fence £800,000 on the anticipated receipt from the sale of land at Ewenny Road, Maesteg, for regeneration.

Discussions with a prospective purchaser are said to be at an advanced stage.

The council has also spent £207,000 to date on “fees”, which the report states “is covered by a combination of secured corporate feasibility funding and Special Regeneration Fund revenue allocations”.

The report adds that “assuming all funding is secured” procurement work will start by summer 2019, with work starting on site in early 2020. Work is expected to take 16 months.

The work to the town hall is expected to include significant repair and restoration to secure the building’s future.

The first-floor auditorium will be enhanced and proposals are being developed for what has been termed “a modern and flexible library space” within the existing indoor market hall.

Just one trader, Sew and Sew, remains in the in- door hall and is due to relocate to the outdoor market units in April, leaving it empty for the first time in 136 years.

Business owner Marcelle Humphreys last week hit out at the council for getting traders to leave years in advance of any potential work taking place.

In response a Bridgend council spokesman said: “We felt it best to serve notice on market traders as early as possible as we were able to offer them the alternative option of relocating to the outdoor market.

“Many have done so and are trading well.”