Rent, refurbish or rebuild?

By Steve Bax on Oct 20, 08 05:35 PM in Out and about

About three years ago, after attending a Runnymede Council meeting, I was approached by a couple of a senior Tory councillors and asked to follow them.

I wondered what was going on: perhaps they had some top secret information to impart, or at least a juicy story of some sort. So we left the brightly lit council chambers and went down a dark and deserted corridor to an empty office.

Knowing journalists are not always the most popular of folk, I considered the possibility I might be in for a 'roughing'. I wracked my brains to think if I'd written anything particularly outrageous.

Anyway the two councillors sat me down and proceeded to make the case as to why the Conservative group was spending more than £11m on building new council offices.

The old premises (I say old, but some of it was built as recently as the 80s) was falling apart they said. It was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, and badly suited to the demands of a modern office, eg. for computer cabling etc. Clearly they'd fallen out of love with the old building and the question in front of them was whether refurbish, rent somewhere else, or cough up for a swanky new building.

They'd decided to splash the cash.

The case was straightforward they told me: renting is dead money, the refurb option was too expensive, but rebuilding from scratch would enable the council to create a modern and 'future proof' facility etc etc.

The plan was to flatten Addlestone Community Centre (next to the Civic Offices in Station Road), and move it to custom built premises in Garfield Road - a move which cost the council about £3m. Once the community centre had vacated there would be sufficient land next to the council's Station Road HQ to build a new civic offices, which it has since happened.

Looking at it objectively I could agree there was some merit to rebuilding. But on the other hand I was getting one-side of the argument and also had to wonder why councillors were sharing this information with me in the first place.

Clearly they felt they were making the right decision, but were concerned that the local electorate might agree with the Runnymede Labour group that a new building was a waste of money.

I did a street survey a week or two later, putting the various options and costs to people, and most had little or no sympathy for the council. They would have been quite happy to see the borough's civil servants staying put in clapped out offices and use the money for something else.

For what it's worth I made sure to put the arguments in my subsequent stories and let the readers decide. The Tories were miffed I was still giving column inches to Labour arguments despite them 'setting me straight' but it is not my place to take sides.

So anyway, if you've read this far, thanks for sticking with me. The reason I'm sharing all this is because the arguments put to me on that evening have come to the fore again this week.

On Friday our Chertsey reporter Rupert Basham spoke to John Furey, the leader of Runnymede Council, and asked him if the borough still hopes to make 'at least £5m' from the sale of the land housing the former Civic Offices as housing. I was told by the two councillors in 2005 that this influx of cash could replenish some of the £11.9m being spent on the new building.

Cllr Furey told the Herald this week that the sale is on track and there is no shortage of interest.

I hope it goes to plan but I can't help thinking the economic ground has shifted away from the council. I suspect developers are less keen to build homes now that its much harder for would-be buyers to obtain a mortgage.

So it may be that the council's award-winning new headquarters in Addlestone will be stuck with a derelict building next door for a while yet.

In the meantime see Rupert's story here