Council in £400k storage spend only to scrap furniture

CARDIFF council spent £400,000 storing furniture for 13 years, only to then throw it away.

For 13 years, the local authority paid to store items including chairs, tables and bookcases.

But, in 2010 an independent valuation was carried out which found that the items were in a poor condition or had little historical interest. They were then thrown away. The disclosure has come after ousted council leader Phil Bale asked Russell Goodway, a former council leader and current cabinet member, about the furniture.

In 1998, when the items were put into storage, Coun Goodway was leader of the authority.

A summit, in 1998, saw European leaders including Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Helmut Kohl meet in Cardiff.

On the final day of the summit South African President Nelson Mandela attended and was granted the freedom of the city.

At that time, the Lower Hall was used as a media centre for the European Summit and the first floor Assembly Room was used as the main conference space.

Coun Goodway has responded to Coun Bale’s question, saying the City Hall was completely emptied before the event.

“In order to accommodate the 1998 meeting of the European Council, City Hall was completely vacated to provide the organisers with a ‘clean’ building.

“Some items of furniture, fixtures and fittings were disposed of at that time due to their poor condition or because the decision was taken that they were surplus to requirements. The bulk of the items were, however, placed in storage with a significant amount being returned to the building following the event.

“Other items were kept in storage, in a private facility, until they were disposed of in 2010 following an independent valuation which concluded that the remaining items were in poor condition, of little or no interest in historical terms and of little or no value.

“The cost of storage over the 13-year period is estimated to have amounted to some £400,000.”

He said there is not a detailed inventory of the items but that it included 50 oak chairs, 58 carver oak chairs, office chairs, various large and very large tables, fireguards and four bookcases.

Coun Bale said: “Cardiff City Hall is one of the most historic buildings in Wales and it is shocking that we have lost so many original features, despite spending over £400,000 in storage costs in over a decade.

“I’ll be asking the council’s chief executive to carry out an urgent investigation to find out just what historic items have been lost from City Hall and why no proper records have been retained since their ‘disposal’ in 2010 by the previous Lib Dem Council”.

In 1998, the cost of a custom-made table for the event was raised in Westminster. Hansard records an exchange between Labour’s Doug Henderson and Conservative David Wilshire which said that the original specification had to be changed for a sound system to be built into the table. At that time, the cost was expected to be £50,000 – now around £83,630.