Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Councillor Fear and Councillor M. Olszewski. 

1. To receive declarations of interest from Members on items included in this agenda

There were no declarations of interest.

The Committee received a report to consider the options available to the Council to bring forward the refurbishment and re-use of the former St Giles & St Georges School building in Newcastle Town Centre, following the decision of the Board of Choices Housing not to take their interest any further. Choices had been looking for a new headquarters and had considered the former St Giles and St Georges School. Choices had joined with the Wrekin Housing Trust and did not want to proceed at this time.

The report proposed three options for the site for the Committee to consider. These were:

1. Market the building again without a requirement for community use or public access. It was recognised that the town centre had many available buildings that could be leased or bought, most of which of which did not have such a large upfront refurbishment cost.

2. Offer the site to the market with the option of it being cleared for redevelopment (as long as the Council was satisfied with the design of the replacement building) i.e. accept the demolition of the building. The building was not listed but it did lie within the Town Centre Conservation Area and demolition would not be permitted until there were detailed plans agreed for a replacement building. There would almost certainly be objections to this for both historical and townscape reasons. However, as a cleared development site it would almost certainly be a more marketable proposition than seeking a user which needed to spend significant monies to bring the building back into use.

3. Explore a simple refurbishment of the building, funded through Council borrowing (if Cabinet was prepared to countenance this) and use the building for the Council’s own purposes. There may be a range of candidates for this but such a proposal would have to be seen as part of a wider review of the Council’s property needs. It may be possible to off-set some of the cost of this option by selling or leasing existing Council-owned premises elsewhere in the town.

Officers were looking for comments from Members prior to reporting to Cabinet at its meeting on 18^th July 2012. Officers stated the current economic climate was very different from when the property was purchased. When the Council acquired the building, there was funding available from such bodies as Advantage West Midlands and North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership. Members noted that the Council needed to act quickly at the time of purchasing the site and there was no reason at that point in time that proposals for it could not work. It had been felt that there was a need for a communal room in Newcastle that could accommodate 200 people, and at the time of purchasing the former school, the building had the capacity to provide this, with an auditorium included in the proposals for Choices to relocate there. It was an interesting building that sat adjacent to the Queens Gardens and when the building was purchased, the original idea had been to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

To consider any business which is urgent within the meaning of Section 100B(4) of  the Local Government Act 1972

There was no urgent business considered.