£3.5M COST OF SELLING OFF COUNCIL BUILDINGS
Political reporter Phil Corrigan looks into Stoke-on-trent City Council plans to dispose of Hanley Town Hall and the City Central Library as part of its ‘asset maximisation programme’
COUNCIL chiefs will spend more than £3 million moving staff and services to different buildings – so other sites can be sold off.
Stoke-on-trent City Council has previously listed more than 20 buildings for disposal under its ‘asset maximisation programme’, with the stated aim of saving money by making better use of the authority’s estate.
Cabinet members will now be asked to authorise the spending of up to £3.5 million on refurbishing the council’s retained buildings, so that services can be moved out of the sites listed for sale.
A report to cabinet identifies the first three buildings where works are set to be carried out:
■ The first floor of the Civic Centre in Stoke will be adapted to accommodate the registrar’s service from Hanley Town Hall.
■ Stoke Town Hall will be refurbished to allow the full relocation of the ICT service from the Regent Road site, in Hanley.
■ Part of the ground floor of Two Smithfield, in Hanley, will be turned into a new location for the City Central Library.
These works will allow Hanley Town Hall, Regent Road and the City Central Library to be sold off.
Coucillor Dan Jellyman, right, cabinet member for regeneration, said: “The council’s estate is huge, comprising hundreds of acres of land and properties.
“It’s not sustainable for the council to hold onto all those sites, now that our ways of working have changed and services have been reduced.
“We have been marketing Hanley Town Hall, the Queen’s Theatre in Burslem, and parts of the Spode site this year, and there has been quite a lot of interest, even with the pandemic. “The idea is to get those across the line before moving onto the next round of disposals, which will include Hanley library.”
While the library’s borrowing service is set to move to Two Smithfield, a new location will have to be found for the city archive, which is also based in City Central Library building.
The funding to be approved by cabinet will also pay to convert parts of the ground and first floor of One Smithfield, including the atrium and space originally designed to be a library, into more office space which will be let out to the private sector.
According to the report, council services that previously occupied those spaces have already been relocated to other buildings.
Mr Jellyman says the library will be the council’s only remaining presence across the two Smithfield buildings – under a previous Labour administration they were originally planned to be the authority’s new headquarters.
Dave Proudlove, founder of development and regeneration advisers URBME, believes it is important that prominent city centre buildings are not allowed to deteriorate once they are vacated.
He said: “There have been cases before when a council has sold off buildings and come to regret it.
“There has been talk of selling off Hanley Town Hall for years, with one idea being to turn it into a boutique hotel. But we don’t know how the economy is going to go at the moment.
“My understanding is that the town hall will be disposed off through a development agreement, rather than just a simple sale, so the council should have some control over what happens to it.
“But I am opposed to what they’re planning with the library, which is the finest example of modernist architecture in Hanley.
“If the idea is to create a top-notch city centre, not having a dedicated central library building sends out a terrible message.”