Move Council meetings to Mallory, in Birkenhead town centre

Cllr Jo Bird writes: Wirral Council is expecting to overspend this year's budget by £21 million. Of which, children's services are costing £10 million more than budgeted for and adult's social care £6.5 million more.

In this context, it’s an extravagant waste of council taxpayers money to move Council meetings and services back to Wallasey town hall, which could cost the Council at least £1.6 million every year.

Instead, Council meetings and services should move to the new, modern and adaptable Mallory building in Birkenhead town centre.

We can all see 6 floors of lovely, available office space in Mallory and Irvine buildings. (The empty office space is forecast to cost the Council £3.9 million next year.)

The Council could save a lot of money by temporarily standing down Birkenhead and Wallasey town halls, while seeking other organisations to bring these historic and listed buildings back into use for the long term.

“We’re not in favour of these proposals.

Partly because it’s too expensive. The Council’s financial situation means we can’t afford it.

Recommendation 7 notes that the required capital works is £12 million. This would be funded by borrowing. So the repayments for that borrowing would be £1.2 million per year for 20 years. Plus we know that the revenue cost of running Wallasey Town Hall are £400,000 per year.

The cost to the Council each year would be at least £1.6 million. That’s £4,400 every day every day, or £180 per hour.

It’s an extravagant waste of Council money.

At least £1.6 million a year more pressure on the council budget. Which could then in turn lead to the kind of cuts to frontline services in a few months time that you referred to earlier.

There’s no good reason to spend millions of pounds when we don’t have to. There’s an obvious common sense solution. That is to move to Mallory building.

We’re only not considering that solution today because other parties voted against that at the last July meeting.”

Cllr Pat Cleary said, “The July report said the Mallory building has the space needed to deliver all the services currently delivered in the Town Halls.

It gave indicative capital costs for providing the civic function of £3 million. Okay. So it’s important for making this decision that we fully understand, given our financial predicament, what the financial implications of that decision are.

That £3 million is a fraction of the cost that Councillor Bird itemised, in terms of the cost of moving in, the capital spend required and the ongoing operating costs of Wallasey Town Hall.

So as I said, given our financial situation and also the recent costly experience of moving back and forth - we moved from Wallasey to Birkenhead and then back to Wallasey Town Hall.

I think it should by now actually be obvious that the sensible direction of travel is to actually stand down both the Town Halls.

Stand down both Town Halls and concentrate all the civic functions in Mallory. That is the common sense solution.”

Clips from Policy & Resources committee held on 6 November 2024