Nottinghamshire County Council could move its headquarters to a new building near Hucknall within 18 months, senior local leaders have confirmed. It comes as the landmark building on the banks of the River Trent has been deemed as "big, expensive, half-empty", and costs more than £1.7m to operate and maintain each year.
The council’s 'new low carbon, an all-electric office' at the Top Wighay site near Linby and Hucknall, which has already had full planning permission, could be the new home of the council’s civic, democratic and leadership functions, subject to approval at a Full Council meeting on Thursday, July 13. If approved, construction will start later this year. The building is also earmarked to be the new home of two key council front line services, the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) for vulnerable children and adults, and the council’s customer service centre, which handles all public enquiries.
Ben Bradley, the leader of Nottinghamshire County Council who is also MP for Mansfield, spoke about the plans to leave the building in the winter of 2024/2025. Sat next to Councillor Keith Girling at the iconic Nottinghamshire County Hall building, he said: "The occupancy rate here is 30 percent - on any given day."
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The building on Loughborough Road also requires essential maintenance work which would cost more than £30m over the next 12 years, with up to a further £28m needed to bring the building up to modern environmental standards. "There is a really straightforward kind of headline figure that I think will help people to understand more broadly", said Mr Bradley.
"There is around £58 million for maintenance of this building over the next 15 years to get it up to a standard that we expect from a public building in terms of efficiency and energy, and everything else; versus building a new one at Top Wighay of £18 million and a half."
He added: "And we are building that one anyway, regardless of moving out of this. So the cost difference is quite staggering.
"And the question for us as politicians and delivering public services is - do you want to spend £58 million on doing up an old building or do you want to spend it on delivering public services? Which is a pretty easy question to answer.
"The history and the heritage of this building is beautiful - and it will be pointed out in the future as we work through what we do with it. But from a public service perspective, we have got a duty to make the best use of that money."
The future of the building on the south bank on River Trent however remains unclear at this stage. "The things we can say at this point is - we will protect the heritage of the building", said Mr Bradley.
"We will protect the bits people like about it - and we are looking at that now. We will make sure that we are consulting with staff and the community about what we do because there will still be an office in West Bridgford and we need to make sure that our staff are happy and comfortable where they work."
While specific plans for the County Hall building are still up in the air, Mr Bradley said: "Having built this building which we will finish in winter 2024, we want to be in it as quickly as we can because then we are starting to make savings and starting to redirect that funding. We want to do that quickly, which is why we have made that decision."
On potential ideas concerning the future of the building, Councillor Girling, who is a Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Asset Management, said: "It might be that we sell it, but we would put those caveats on that it has to be useful. It might be that we do a joint venture - there is all sort of things we could do with it. We have got no idea at the moment because we have not made that decision."
The move to the new office is also deemed by Mr Girling as an opportunity "to deliver those services in the heart of Nottinghamshire". He added: "We have had protests from opposition councillors where they walked from their council building in Ashfield to here, demonstrating how detached we are from the people of the North of the county.
"We are moving to the middle of the county. And that is really important. Most of the services are going to be there where are actually required. So from a practical delivering services point of view, this is absolutely the right thing to do. The additional benefits are that we are moving out of an old building that is going to cost a lot of money to bring up to standard and we are moving into one which is setting the standard."
The new building will be all-electric and built to standards which is said to rank the building within the top 10 per cent of new UK non-domestic buildings in terms of environmental sustainability. Due to a low carbon design, high insulation levels and heat absorbing features, it is hoped that heating bills will be kept as low as possible.
And this design will also aim to keep the building cool in the warmer months, so no air-conditioning will be installed. Rooftop solar panels will also help generate electricity.
It is hoped that these plans will save taxpayers’ money by creating more carbon-neutral council buildings, generating income by leasing older buildings with higher running-costs and co-locating with other public organisations.
