Labour have asked for East Ayrshire Council’s London Road HQ to be put up for sale, despite being told it would fall far short of the millions required to transfer operations to another building.
Labour group leader councillor Maureen McKay suggested the move during discussions on the council’s property management at Cabinet.
Councillors heard that a number of council properties are currently underperforming, including Civic Centre North and South.
Andrew Kennedy, head of facilities, recommended that both premises be declared surplus and put up for sale.
However, Cllr McKay argued that the headquarters at London Road, which was categorised as performing adequately, should also be considered alongside them.
The Labour councillor added she was concerned that it may appear the council is reneging on its ‘town-centre first’ commitment.
She said: “In terms of Civic Centre North, what would it take if we were to do an upgrade on that building?
“How would that compare in relation to London Road?”
Eddie Fraser, the council’s chief executive, said that consideration of the estate had taken into account the potential costs.
He said the senior officers had considered ‘how would it look at a time like this, to develop Civic Center North and South for many millions of pounds, when we know we are tight in terms of the capital programme’.
Mr Kennedy said that Covid had reduced the demand for office space, with staff already moving out of the Civic Centre buildings to other council offices.
He added that the council had already invested in office space at the Opera House and Johnnie Walker Bonds.
Cllr McKay said: “I’m a bit surprised that in a sense we are not looking at these three as a total. We have had a policy in the past where we had an emphasis on making sure we had high visibility within the town centre of Kilmarnock.”
Council leader Douglas Reid said that the costs of replicating the London Road facilities in another town centre building would run to ‘tens of millions’.
“I don’t think the public would thank us for considering spending that amount of money. But we need to put the figure out there,” he said.
Mr Fraser indicated that the consideration of all three offices would be included in a report on the wider office accommodation before the summer recess.
However, Cllr McKay pushed or the London Road and Civic Centres to be looked at separately, pointing out that the council did not have to accept any offers made.
Councillor Reid did agree that the situation had to be explained.
He said: “Folk will wonder in terms of our town centre first policy. Any capital receipt we get for London Road would be nowhere near how much we need to replicate what we have here.”
Mr Kennedy said: “You are looking at between £10m and £15m to actually address all of the issues in that building [Civic Centre North].
“We are unlikely get much more than £1m for selling this [London Road} site.”
Cllr McKay reiterated her desire to see the three properties put out to market.
She said this was ‘because we are making presumptions on what the market response would be’.
Cllr Reid responded: “I wouldn’t like to create any uncertainty about the future use of this building.
“A lot of work has been done this building. This chamber alone was £1m ten years or so ago.
“Wouldn’t like to go down that path. I take your point, but the costs has to be considered. Andrew gave figures of £10m to £15m, but I think it would be way in excess of that and I don’t think the public would thank us for considering that.”
Elsewhere, the strategy revealed that the number of properties performing well had dropped from 199 in 2021 to 175 in 2022.
Similarly, those performing most poorly had also decreased from 20 to 17.
The number of properties had either dropped from the top rating or been raised from the lowest increased from 88 to 14.
It was agreed that both Civic Centre North and South are made surplus and put up for sale. London Road will be included in a review of office accommodation, with emphasis on better utilisation of the facilities.
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