Manchester Town Hall restoration is £76m overbudget, council confirms

The grade-I listed Town Hall has been closed since 2018 for a huge refurbishment, which was initially expected to be completed this year



The restoration of Manchester Town Hall will cost at least £76 million more than first planned, the council has confirmed.

The grade-I listed Town Hall has been closed since 2018 for a huge refurbishment, which was initially expected to be completed this year. However, that deadline slipped back to 2026 as the Covid-19 pandemic and unforeseen issues created delays in the project.

Now, bosses say they believe there is roughly around two years’ of work to complete, but they are confident progress will speed up — and the Town Hall will reopen in July 2026. However, the LDRS understands they cannot rule out needing more cash as the new budget hits £429.8m.

“It’s the largest heritage project of this scale in the country, and with that brings a lot of complications,” said deputy council leader Garry Bridges, in charge of overseeing the project.

“Throughout the whole time we’ve done work, there’s been a pandemic, there has been inflation after Ukraine. But on top of that, the nature of the specialist work going on in that building is really complex.”

More specifically, some £1.6m of problems have been found with previously unseen issues in the building’s roof, which were only ‘discovered’ once the outer layers of the building were removed.

Council chiefs say at least one new problem has been found in this fashion every week since last summer. Many require unique engineering solutions as off-the-shelf parts and materials cannot satisfy the need to restore the building to grade-I condition, bosses add.

Delays also mean contractors can claim for compensation from the council, arguing they have incurred extra costs on equipment hire and lost the ability to ply their trade elsewhere when work overruns. The council says it is ‘robustly negotiating 80 such claims to ensure a fair outcome’.

The Town Hall is the second major council building project to overspend in recent years. The first was Aviva Studios, which opened last year.

In 2017, it originally had a budget of £110m. Earlier this year, the final bill was calculated at £241m.

While the two projects do not share many similarities, the repeat overspend raises questions over the council’s financial prudence. While Coun Bridges said it was ‘hard to actually judge the Town Hall against another project in terms of its costs, because it is so specialist’, the council ‘will look at ways we can learn lessons’ from both.

Source

£76 million pounds over budget!!!

How the hell do they get away with it?

Someone hasn't done their job properly costing everything or there have obviously been back handers or something.

I can understand going over budget by a small amount even £100k but £76 million pounds takes the piss.

I guess no one will be sacked either way for this royal fuck up?

They'll be putting up my council tax to pay for this i bet 

karlypants wrote:£76 million pounds over budget!!!

How the hell do they get away with it?

Someone hasn't done their job properly costing everything or there have obviously been back handers or something.

I can understand going over budget by a small amount even £100k but £76 million pounds takes the piss.

I guess no one will be sacked either way for this royal fuck up?

I suspect that a lot of the additional cost is because the building is grade 1 listed - meaning it has to be repaired to how it was originally built (which apparently was in 1868) and this work can only be done by specialist craftsmen.

Over 30 years ago my dad was asked to do some work on a court in Manchester which also was a listed building (I think it was the Minshull Street Crown Court?).

At the time my dad was nearing retirement.

It turned out that he was the youngest of the crew working there because they were the only ones left who had been taught the skills to do the repairs in the traditional manner needed.

I remember him saying at the time that once his generation retired there was no one else who could do such work in the future.

Not only do listed buildings require specialised craftsmen but they also require compatible building materials - mahogany wood, Italian marble or whatever else that is needed repairing.

I don't think it is all down to someone getting their sums wrong.

Whilst you are probably correct Sluffy this is £76 million pounds over budget. Just think about it for a minute. It’s such a mega amount.

The council should already have this factored into the amount it was initially going to cost!

karlypants wrote:Whilst you are probably correct Sluffy this is £76 million pounds over budget. Just think about it for a minute. It’s such a mega amount.

The council should already have this factored into the amount it was initially going to cost!

Depends what services the Council has in-house.

In my day they were outsourcing architectural services, so I suspect Manchester has brought in consultants to price up the work they thought was needed and then put the work out to tender.

If any additional work is found to be needed, then it depends on how the contract is written as to who (the council or the contractor) would take on the extra costs.

Obviously I've no idea what has gone on here but £76m over budget sounds to me that they've found something major that needs doing above and beyond what the original contract was awarded and agreed and/or that there's been a need to get the lawyers (and their fees!) involved at sometime or other.

According to the news article the original budget was around £350m awarded in 2018.

Since then of course we've had Covid and lockdowns, which obviously would have effected things, together with the massive rise in energy costs.

I suggest that there maybe be a more reasonable and understandable narrative that goes a good way to understanding why the cost has gone up by nearly £80m than just that someone got their numbers wrong or that corruption has taken place.

That’s a massive amount to not have initially accounted for.

BoltonTillIDie wrote:That’s a massive amount to not have initially accounted for.

It is a large sum, obviously but if you look at it another way it is just (I use the word loosely) a 20% overspend on original budget.

I usually have that and more overspend when I've gone on holidays with my daughter, it's probably normal for most people who aren't anal about what they need to spend extra on what they hadn't originally budgeted for.

I'm not suggesting my holidays and public finances are the same sort of thing though but just trying to show how things can and do crop up that you hadn't planned for.

I suspect that the near £80m is made up of several unexpected items, I would imagine Covid played a big part in terms of additional costs, and also there will be finding stuff they hadn't a clue about such as the roof issues. The fact that it is a grade 1 listed building automatically ramps up the cost of everything and it wouldn't surprise me either if there has been some litigation and legal expenses along the way that wouldn't have been allowed for initially.

What I've been trying to say is that people get hung up on the headline £76m overspend but ignore the detail of how that came about and whether it was reasonable additional expense or whether someone made a massive cock up or something dodgy has happened.

I strongly suggest it is more likely to be the former than the latter but until further details emerge we can't be certain as to which it really is.