ZEEBRAZONE

10:44am Saturday 4th December 2010

OPPOSITION councillors in York are demanding answers over a £12 million uncertainty surrounding the city’s new council headquarters.

City of York Council has said its move to West Offices in Station Rise will lead to it saving £17 million over the next 25 years by allowing the authority to reduce the number of premises where its staff were housed.

But when the original plans for the project to create a new HQ were drawn up in 2005, ahead of the ill-fated proposals for a purpose-built facility at Hungate, officers said it had the potential to save £29 million over a 30-year period.

Coun James Alexander, who heads the council’s Labour group, will next week use a full meeting of the authority to ask its leader, Coun Andrew Waller, why the “drop” in projected savings has materialised.

“The plan for the new council headquarters was to save £29 million,” said Coun Alexander.

“Now they say it will only save £17 million, in which case I want to know why there has been a £12 million cost increase. It is a new council office, not a palace.

“£12 million is enough money to pay for a community stadium or a city centre swimming pool. I am concerned that by the time the project is finished, there will be no savings at all while we are cutting services and making people redundant.”

The £43.8 million West Offices project, involving the transformation of the listed building which was once York’s first railway station, will house the city’s customer contact centre and 1,400 staff. Talks between the council and its current landlords over the arrangements for vacating some of its current premises have begun. The authority has said the £29 million figure quoted in 2005 referred to savings which could be made through a new HQ compared to staying in the accommodation it had at the time, factoring in “additional liabilities” which might arise over the 30-year period but which could not be specifically budgeted for.

It said the £17 million saving the West Offices move was predicted to lead to was “similar” to expectations five years ago, but “assumptions have substantially altered” since then because of the way the project changed in the wake of the Hungate scheme being abandoned.