AMBITIOUS plans for Knutsford’s council offices and market hall have been put on hold after councillors voted narrowly to postpone all but essential work on council buildings.

Town councillors agreed by six to five at last week’s council meeting to put on the back burner all non-essential works until at least the 2020/21 civic year.

They backed by a single vote a motion by Cllr Stewart Gardiner, who said it was not his intention to ‘scupper or reduce the ambitions of this council’.

He said: “However I feel we have in recent months experienced a couple of worrying sets of scenarios regarding our capabilities as a council to engage in extensive increases in the management of our property portfolio.

“Firstly, the issue relating to 60 King Street and the significant increase in the costs of works which have to be undertaken to that property, and the consequences for this council not just in expenditure but also in loss of revenue for a period, and the impact that will have upon the ability of this council to expend money going forward, particularly in the upcoming financial year.

“But also we have on occasions been less than well served by the professionals we have employed to engage in advising us on matters relating to our property portfolio.

“I want to press pause because I think we are in danger of getting ourselves into a complex situation where we have a number of building projects under way being run simultaneously.”

The decision will not affect planned work on the front elevation of 60 King Street and scheduled works at the cemetery chapel, but will impact the funding of professional services linked to any future works which may be at the planning stage.

A report by town clerk Adam Keppel-Green said the town council had agreed to take freehold ownership of the council offices and library gardens.

The transfer is expected to take place in April, and the approved business case involves undertaking improvements and creating commercially rentable offices.

Works could be undertaken from this summer, he said, with a refurbished office opening in early 2020.

The council took ownership of the market hall in 2014, and part of the business case for the transfer looked at refurbishing or redeveloping the building.

The Assets and Operations committee has worked with architects to develop plans to demolish the hall and build a ground floor market with four apartments above.

The council took ownership of two public toilet buildings in 2013, and appointed Danfo to manage them on a 25-year lease.

This included work to create three smaller toilets in each building, leaving the majority of each redundant.

The Assets committee has developed plans to convert the redundant space into commercially lettable units. The council has received planning consent for the changes, and expressions of interest from 32 potential tenants.

In October the Assets committee approved a new five-year planned maintenance programme for 60 King Street, with all works funded through rental income. The estimated cost is £260,000, with a further £45,000 for general repairs and agent fees.

Cllr Gardiner said: “We don’t know when we will be taking ownership of the council offices. If we don’t know when we’re getting the building, how can we know when we’re going to be in a position to have tenants?

“The general public are going to be receiving a request for council tax. I know the amount we ask them to pay towards Knutsford Town Council relative to the big budget is negligible.

“However there is a perception that we are asking the taxpayer for more money for projects that are not necessarily essential to the running of this council at this time.

“I recognise this building [the council offices] needs work doing on it, but we are not sitting here with buckets on the tables collecting rain.

“There are works that might be necessary or even essential, and there are works we should be doing but they can wait for another 12 months.

“We are nowhere near going to be in a position to do any work to the market hall this side of March 2020.

“Postponing the market is not something that’s going to make a significant difference to our market traders or to the ability of this council going forward to have an ambition for that site.”

Over the public toilets he said: “Creating additional commercial floor space in a town like Knutsford where there’s already available commercial floorspace is at best risky,” adding that given how much the council was having to spend in the coming few months on 60 King Street it should only be undertaking any further works deemed essential.

He said: “Although there are no direct implications for the precept these projects should be postponed.”

Cllr James Power said: “The scale and timing of this is clearly wrong. We are taking on too much at the moment, and need to err on the side of caution, so I am wholeheartedly for putting pause on this.”

Cllr Andrew Malloy said: “We don’t know exactly how much it is going to cost to renovate this building [the council offices]. But that’s the process we are going through now.

“We do need to go through a process of due diligence and costing and designing before we get anywhere near the planning stage.”

That process cost money, he said, but that didn’t mean the council should pause it because when the council finally gained possession of the building in six or 12 months’ time ‘we can hit the ground running’ on the basis of having all the necessary information, planning permission and quotes for all the work.