Move on hold for seaside council

A SEASIDE council has ditched plans to move from its historic town hall to an industrial estate – but a question mark still hangs over the future of its seat of government.

Scarborough Council has been looking at options for alternative accommodation since last yea, when setting up its HQ on the local business park was still on the cards.

Yesterday councillors were told that this particular idea had been dropped, amid fears it would make the Town Hall remote and inaccessible to both public and staff.

Bureaucrats said they would continue to examine the idea of a change of address and moving to an out -of-town centre site such as Weaponness had not been ruled out.

Scarborough Town Hall was opened in 1901 by Princess Beatrice of Battenburg, daughter of Queen Victoria, after it had been bought by the then Scarborough Corporation from a leading local businessman, John Woodall.

The existing St Nicholas Street complex has high heating, lighting, and maintenance costs, according to officials who say it will not measure up to support energy saving targets and more flexible staff working patterns.

A project board was set up and commissioned a feasibility study into existing and future accommodation. The initial 22 options have been whittled down to seven, but a move is still a possibility.

However, the idea has come under fire from councillors who point out that Scarborough Town Hall is often regarded with envy by civic colleagues in other parts of the country.

Coun Lucy Haycock said: “I sometimes think we do not think of civic pride enough. When we visit other boroughs which do not have town hall like this they come to our borough and are so impressed with our seat of government.

“That’s a very important issue that we must consider.” She added that some visiting VIPs who were too tied up with civic business to view the town hall came back for a tour in their own time.

She continued: “We should be proud of what we have got, not try to destroy it.” Eyebrows were also raised about why the council should move when it had gone to so much trouble to re-organise its existing building.

Large amounts of money had been spent extending the building at the back to provide modern office space and creating the Customer First Centre in the building next door.

Coun Hazel Lynskey said: “This is a historic building. Everyone knows the town hall. I cannot believe we have gone to so much trouble with Customer First and them move away from our own history.”

She particularly concerned by the idea of leaving such a central site for an out-of-town centre location. “I can’t envisage what it would be like in a box on Dean Road,” she continued.

Coun Dilys Vine Cluer said: “I’m very pleased the business park option has been dropped. It would have been very difficult for staff and for people who need access to the town hall for all sorts of reasons.”

Coun David Jeffels said that the volatile state of local government meant that the council might be overtaken by events anyway.

He said: “The debate about merging local authorities has not gone away. It is still hovering in the background. I think sheer economics may bring about change in the long term.”

n Scarborough Council set up a brains-trust yesterday to decide the future of its ailing Futurist Theatre. The meeting was told by officials the site must be redeveloped whatever happens to the existing building.

Calls to save the theatre or build a new one were greeted with rounds of applause from the packed public gallery. But some councillors complained 100,000 of public money had gone to subsidising the theatre this year and it could not go on.