£1million billtokeep CityHall mothballed

mothballed building could be much higher, with its rateable value alone pushing the bill to around £1m in the same period.

And they also do not include a three-year period after the property was locked up.

The Perthshire Advertiser requested details of efforts to maintain the King Edward Street venue dating back to the time of its closure, following the move of events to Perth Concert Hall.

In response Perth and Kinross Council’s Freedom of Information team said that costs for marketing exercises between July 2009 and September 2015 totalled £108,552.30.

Two main lease marketing efforts were carried out during that time, in which plans to turn the hall into a continental food market or a hotel emerged as the front runners. Schemes for conversion did not progress beyond the first round of the process.

A previous bid to turn the listed building into a retail development, proposed by Wharfside Regeneration, also fell through after failing to generate sufficient financial backing.

PKC’s officers were not able to provide figures for costs in the intervening period from 2005 and 2008 because, they told us, figures were not held.

But in a breakdown of spending between 2008 to recently, £50,670 was forked out on electricity, gas, water, maintenance, servicing and security, with nearly half of that attributed to maintenance. In 2012-13 alone, seven years after closure, nearly £13,400 was spent on maintenance.

The FOI team broke the detail down further, revealing that in April 2016 the City Hall suffered from a build-up of raw sewage and oil in the kitchen area, with £353 spent on putting it right. Some of the costs were picked up by Perth Common Good Fund.

A survey to remove dead pigeons, replacing broken windows, weeding and replacing padlocks were all listed among expenses in the past year, running to more than £3000.

And a flurry of activity to have the building free from dead birds and droppings ahead of the city of culture launch on August 19 cost nearly £300.

The PA did not specifically request rateable values.

Factoring those in, with Tayside assessors stating the current annual value as £88,700, significantly adds to the values involved. And its proposed value could reach nearly £100,000 in 2017.

PKC’s leisure department took the building to a revaluation bid in 2010. It had been valued at £62,000 annually since the year of its closure.

This means the best part of £1m may have been spent on rates in that 11-year period.