1. Pursuant to Paragraph 10 of the Council Procedure Rules the following question was put by Mr Bernard Brown and answered by Councillor Prochak.

Question: In the Budget for the current year there is a Capital Sum of £460,000 for the Development of the Town Hall.  The forecast last seen suggests a spend in this financial year of £445,000 with £15,000 transferred to 2022/23. 

Can the Council give an update on the progress made to date, when the output from this expenditure is expected to be published and the timescale for implementing its conclusions.  Is there any reason to believe the original guesstimate of £14m will be substantially varied?

Answer: The Town Hall Renaissance project is still in the design process and is currently in stage two of the RIBA development process.  The project has undertaken planning pre-application meetings with the Council's planning department to inform the final proposal.  It is anticipated that a full planning application will be ready for submission in the early summer with an aim to have this considered at Planning Committee before Christmas.  In the meantime, a full report on the business case for the development will be presented to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee in July and then to Cabinet and Full Council in September.  Whilst we are still in the design process, the professional team are aware of the budget constraints and we do not anticipate a significant variance from the original budget estimates at this stage.  There will be an opportunity for a full debate on the commercial case for this project once full costs are available.

Supplementary Oral Question: Thank you for the very detailed reply which was very very helpful.  There are just a few little bits of information that I would like you explain.   Is it intended that the project will still be cost neutral and if so, over what period of time? Also, I do not see the project on the capital programme, when is it going on there and how much has been spent so far?

Answer: Thank you Mr Brown, welcome to the Council, good to have you here again.  Before I answer your supplementary question can I just say that this is a long-term project, certainly pushed on by COVID also pushed on by the fact that we have signed up to be carbon neutral by 2030 and the Government by 2050 so this has pushed us along this track.  I do not know if anybody knows how much we spend on our energy bills at the moment but it is something like £60,000 a year and as you can imagine, this is not a building where you can switch off one rooms’ heating, the whole building has to be heated.  So that is the long-term aim and so the carbon neutrality of the new build will help enormously towards reducing our carbon footprint.  

I would like also to say the reason why we chose this route apart from what I have already mentioned is if we did nothing at the moment with this building there would still be incredible costs to meet because there’s lots of repairs needed, so it is not an ideal working environment for our officers and as I have mentioned, we have had the COVID and also the whole thing about climate change.  So, the reason why I am explaining that is that it is cost neutral over a long period and we have already got people signed up to rent once it is done.  In terms of how much we have spent at the moment I have not got the answer in front of me but I'll certainly get that answer for you.  I think what we said already is that actually it is in the second phase as I have said in the answer here, it is the second phase of the development process but I am happy to get the specific answer to you at a later stage.