Criticism of Newry council £20m project

Criticism of Newry council £20m project

31 January 2024

NEWRY, Mourne and Down Council’s plan spend at least £20m on a new headquarters little over a decade after a similar facility was opened in Downpatrick has been labelled a “flagrant waste of ratepayers’ money”.

The council is aiming to build a civic hub that includes offices and a second 43-seat council chamber in Newry, some 12 years after new premises fulfilling the same function were opened in Downpatrick.

It is understood the council, which currently has debts of more than £57m, plans to borrow more money to fund the project.

The £11m facility at Downpatrick’s Downshire Estate was unveiled in 2012 in preparation for the merger of Down District Council with Newry and Mourne District Council.

It is proposed that the Newry scheme will be built on a car park that currently generates in the region of £100,000 annually in income for the council.

Alliance councillor Cadogan Enright has accused the council of ignoring a “considerably cheaper and infinitely more suitable” site that has recently become available at Bagenals Castle in Newry city centre.

Cllr Enright, who sits on the board of the Newry City Centre Regeneration Project, says he doesn’t believe the council needs new offices and argues that its headquarters should be located in the existing facility in Downpatrick.

He said that if the council was determined to build a new facility, it should look at “more cost-effective alternatives”.

He said the site at Bagenal’s Castle has “existing utility infrastructure and is adjacent to the Newry Museum building where dozens of council staff are already accommodated”.

The vacant site previously housed a Lidl supermarket and has an asking price of £2m.

Cllr Enright continued: ”It seems the council has a complete blind spot when it comes to looking at cheaper and more cost-effective alternative sites and refuses to consider using the existing, modern facility in the county town – it’s a flagrant waste of ratepayers’ money,” he told the Recorder.

 “The cost of this unnecessary vanity project will create two separate centres for council staff in Newry. This burden will fall to hard-pressed ratepayers who are already paying for a modern civic centre in Downpatrick that at minimal cost can be adapted to meet the council’s needs.”

He said the council’s proposal was entirely based on “outdated pre-pandemic thinking”.

He added: “The project includes building large amounts of speculative empty office space with no tenant. There is very little demand for office space in a post-Covid world where more and more people are working from home”. 

A spokesperson for Newry, Mourne and Down Council said that at the time of the merger of the former Newry and Mourne Council and Down Council in 2014-15 it was agreed that two headquarters would be retained in Newry and Downpatrick.

This was owing to the geographical spread of the new district, the third largest local authority in Northern Ireland.

The spokesperson said the new civic hub at Abbey Way in Newry, subject to planning permission, will play a significant role in the regeneration of the city centre.

“The hub will replace the Council offices at Monaghan Row, recently acquired from the Council by the Southern Health and Social Care Trust. The £900,000 acquisition will allow the Trust to expand and develop services at the hospital.”

The spokesperson continued: The impact of the project on parking income from the Abbey Way site has been a consideration during the project development, and a number of parking surveys have been completed by appointed traffic engineers.

“The traffic engineers note the available off-street car parking spaces at Abbey Way are never fully occupied with typically more than 62% of the total spaces available, and that the maximum occupancy of these two car parks was observed on Saturday afternoons, with 116 spaces occupied of the 304 total.

“Therefore, the current income from parking charges at Abbey Way is based on a low level of spaces being occupied, and the number of occupied spaces that generate the current income will continue be available after the project is completed. It is therefore anticipated that the income levels will not be impacted.”

Turning to the cost of the civic hub, the spokesperson said that in October 2019 the preferred option was estimated at £10.5m. Following further design development in June 2022 the figure rose to £12.76m and that the current estimate, taking into consideration construction inflation, tender inflation and risk allowance was now £14.97m.

“Decisions made by the council on the capital budget focus on investments for the long-term, which will provide benefits over an extended period to the district,’ the spokesperson continued

Turning to the site of the project, the spokesperson said a comprehensive selection exercise commenced in 2018 to consider all potential sites.

“This process considered a total of 33 public and privately owned sites, including the Lidl site at Bagenal’s Castle. This exercise identified the Abbey Way site, which is within council ownership, as the preferred location. The Council do not own the other sites considered, therefore site acquisition costs would have been incurred if a privately owned site had been selected.

“In relation to Bagenal’s Castle itself, this is not an office space but a functioning museum. Nine staff are accommodated here directly engaged in the delivery of museum services in the Newry and Mourne Museum, similar to Down County Museum.”

The spokesperson went on: “Following an independent review into the Newry City Centre Regeneration (NCCR) Programme, an outline business case working group was also established to engage on the project with the local community, business representatives and representatives from the cathedral, and among the topics discussed were solutions for car parking at the rear of the cathedral.

“Following feedback council have amended the parking plans to include an increased provision of parking from the original development proposal.

The spokesperson added: The civic and regional hub project has also been subject to regular review post Covid-19 through the NCCR Programme board of which Cllr Enright is a member. Office space is also analysed against current post-Covid trends and takes into consideration the council’s agile working policy.

“The council continually reviews its ways of working and how its office space is used. It is important to retain staff and support public sector jobs in modern, up-to-date facilities, to allow staff and councillors to deliver quality services, and be an economic driver for both Downpatrick and Newry.”