Uppermill Civic Hall
Saddleworth residents are facing a bill of almost £800,000 to upgrade Uppermill Civic Hall, Saddleworth News can reveal. Under the Parish Council’s plan to borrow £500,000 to fund the work and then pay the money back over the next 25 years, the total amount payable by the council would total £796,416.50.
The figures are contained in a confidential report circulated among councillors at a meeting held last week to discuss the Civic Hall extension, from which the press and public were excluded. Saddleworth News has obtained a copy of the report, which puts the total cost of the work at £518,309, including VAT.
The Parish Council is to apply to the Government to borrow £500,000 from the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB), a Treasury-funded organisation which makes loans to local authorities. If the Parish Council’s application is successful, it would repay the money over 25 years in annual instalments of £31,856.56, making a total of £796,416.50.
Under the council’s plans for the building, the single-storey rear extension would be replaced by a two-storey structure, which would have better access for disabled people, new toilets on the first floor, and improved kitchen facilities. However, proposals for a new extension at the side of the building, and a staircase to the third floor, were removed from the plans to save money.
Since 1998, the Parish Council has been spending £25,000 a year to repay the loan which was taken out to fund the first phase of improvement work at the Civic Hall. Now the first loan has been paid off, that annual sum of £25,000 can go towards repayments on the proposed new loan.
That means the Parish Council must find an extra £7,000 a year to meet the repayments on the new loan. The confidential report states that, in 2009/10, the Parish Council made £3,000 more than expected from hiring out the hall. The report also predicts that the Parish Council should be able to make an extra £1,500 a year on top of that once the new facilities are in place, accounting for a total of £4,500 towards the annual repayments. The report states that the rest of the money should come from savings in staff costs of £2,500 a year.
Only 11 of the 20 councillors were at last week’s closed meeting at which these issues were discussed, with several of those absent either ill, away on holiday, or unable to attend because of short notice. Despite the low turnout, the councillors agreed to press ahead with the plans outlined in the confidential report.
The Civic Hall was discussed at last night’s regular open meeting of the Parish Council. Independent Cllr Ken Hulme, who has spoken out against aspects of how the process has been handled, criticised what he said was “a lack of a business plan saying where the additional usage is likely to come from.” He said questions about whether the new bigger building would require additional running costs, and whether the cost of renting the hall would change, had not been answered.
Chairman Cllr Keith Begley agreed with Cllr Hulme’s point about the business plan, saying, “It was my understanding we couldn’t get a loan without a business plan of some kind.” He said he had been involved in drawing up similar plans during his career in industry, adding that information such as the predicted future use of the hall, “should be shown in a business plan, however brief.”
Senior Liberal Democrat Cllr Brian Lord, who has played a lead role in planning the extension, said that a detailed business plan wasn’t needed, because the business of how the hall would operate will not be changing. He said, “The whole idea was to provide a better hall than we’ve currently got. The idea was not to try to raise tons more bookings.”
Cllr Lord pointed out that the upgraded building will on the same footprint as the current one. He added, “We are just trying to keep pace with modern requirements.”
Cllr Barbara Beeley added that the current hall only just meets official requirements for disabled access. She said there was a “crying need” to improve facilities for disabled people.
The Parish Council is now waiting to hear whether it will be allowed to submit a formal application to borrow the £500,000. If the work goes ahead it will be carried out by Wiggett Construction, which, according to the confidential report, submitted the lowest of five tenders.
To read more coverage of the Parish Council from Saddleworth News, go here.
More information about the PWLB is available here.
(Editor’s note: The councillors who attended last week’s closed meeting were Cllrs Begley, Cullen, Bagley, Beeley, Birse, Hudson, B Lord, P Lord, Parry, Renold and Shaw. Those who did not attend were Cllrs Atherton, Bingley, Buckley, Davenport, Franklin, Heffernan, Hodgkiss, Hulme and McInnes)
How exactly is it crying out for more disabled facilities? It has a working lift, a disabled toilet and all the floors are flat and easily negotiated in a wheelchair. Have they actually asked how many people with disabilities use the hall each year? I don’t want to sound mean but disabled facilities like any other facilities need to justify their cost with a minimum usage figure of some sort. Can you imagine the council agreeing to take out a loan to put a set of traffic lights at a dangerous junction unless they’d seen figures and data to prove the works were necessary. A business plan is needed to justify this expenditure. And what on earth is going to cost FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS? I’ve been to the civic hall very recently, I held a concert there in fact so I used the full building. There are a few areas of the building which could do with a lick of paint but nothing major! Not £500,000s worth!
And why do they not want to generate more business from it? They way the civic hall is ran is a bit silly in my opinion. It could be a real gold mine for the parish council but it seems they don’t want to take advantage of the market for weddings, conferences, banquets and other events which could all be held in the hall. Rather than looking at ways to spend money on unnecessary material gains, the parish council should be looking to maximise the profits of the hall by taking more bookings and saving the money it would spend on the loan to pay for improvements further down the line when they can be truly justified.
If indeed you have used the Civic Hall recently you will that it does have a single lift, which is abused despite staff efforts, and breaks down leaving wheelchair users and disabled people trapped upstairs. In the event of a fire the lift cannot be used thus trapping people upstairs. This will be addressed by the ramp. However the only disabled toilet is off the gents and affords little privacy to the gents or the disabled person. The number of disabled people using the building is irrelevant. Catering for weddings and banquets requires catering facilities upstairs so that food does not have to be carried a long way and arrive cold. Your opinion of maximising revenue seems to be at odds with other local people but as they say’you can’t please all the people all the time’ especially when it would seem they’re working off half a story.