A councillor warned the public won’t welcome “elaborate” modifications to Conwy Council’s Coed Pella HQ when the council moves out of its current base.
Conwy County Council is in the process of moving out of its current headquarters at Bodlondeb in Conwy to its new HQ at the flagship Coed Pella building in Colwyn Bay.
Both staff and councillors will be redeployed to the state-of-the-art Colwyn Bay building, after the council agreed to hand over Bodlondeb to Cardiff-based Idea Forums as a business centre on a long-term lease.
After being based at the Grade-II listed Bodlondeb since 1996, the cash-strapped authority needs a new council chamber where its 55 councillors can meet for debate – as well as a public gallery.
At a democratic services committee meeting at Bodlondeb this week, councillors discussed available ground floor space at Coed Pella ahead of the move, as well as parking provision.
Councillors were told the new council chamber would see Coed Pella’s large exhibition room repurposed.
But Abergele councillor Paul Luckock warned the committee that the public would not welcome “elaborate” spending at the building – which has already cost around £58m.
“My perspective is very much on cost and sustainability. I’m thinking very much from a council taxpayer’s perspective and a resident’s perspective,” said Cllr Luckock.
“In the present situation, I can’t see that they (the public) would be very happy for us to go for an all-singing, all-dancing facility.
“My own view would be that we provide a functional service so that we can do the democratic process, but I think I would feel very uncomfortable if it looked very elaborate in a sense and if it was high cost because I don’t think residents would see that as a priority.”
The council’s asset manager Bleddyn Evans responded: “In terms of cost, the brief that we were given was a do-minimum specification, so in terms of the chamber, it is quite literally do (the) minimum, but it needs to be functional, so as I mentioned before, limited building works in the chamber.
“There isn’t going to be much building work there, and it’s not going to look much different than what you see there today, apart from a rearranged table arrangement.”
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Cllr Luckock also sought assurances over car parking spaces provided at Coed Pella, as he predicted the situation would be “uncomfortable” for councillors.
“On the car parking, my own view again is it will be uncomfortable probably for all of us, but we have to almost accept the limitations of the car parking as it is at the moment and then think longer term of what additional car parking could be made available,” he said.
“Because I don’t think our council taxpayers and residents would see us having to walk some distance as causing a particular problem.
“So if there is high cost car parking needed to be made, I can’t see council tax payers and residents seeing that as a priority at the present time.”
Mr Evans said Conwy’s 55 councillors would have to park on Colwyn Bay’s available road and street spaces.
“In terms of car parking, the intention is not to spend money in terms of building more car parking spaces or doing anything,” said Mr Evans.
“It will be living with what’s available, as on-road car parking, with people walking from nearby car parking, or another solution.”
Conwy’s leader Cllr Charlie McCoubrey then said the exhibition space was surprisingly bigger than it looked, adding that Coed Pella was “an amazing building”.
“With the parking, you are right. We will have to work at that,” he said.
“From my personal point of view, I could get a number 12 bus to Coed Pella quite easily.
“Getting a bus here (to Bodlondeb) would be very difficult. But everyone will have different solutions, car sharing; everybody is in a different situation.
“When we hold our main meetings, we will have to be quite clever about how we hold meetings and (use car) spaces.”
Cllr McCoubrey added there would be substantial savings from the “one-office solution”.
Cllr David Carr, though, questioned why the council hadn’t built a purpose-built council chamber in the first place, as the building was only completed in 2018.
“The question residents are asking is, when the council spent £54m (£58m) building Coed Pella, why was there no council chamber or conference facilities included? And now we are having to pay the money.”
Council officer Sian Williams then admitted that there would be an additional cost to taxpayers.
“Yes, there will be a cost with the new technical solution over in the proposed council chamber at Coed Pella.
“I think that everybody that uses the facility in Bodlondeb would recognise this is a very old and failing system, so regardless of any possible move, we would have to invest even if we were staying in Bodlondeb, purely because of age.”
Mr Evans then said the new chamber would have 16 chairs for the public gallery, with an option of rearranging the furniture or asking additional members of the public to watch meetings from another room on a screen.
In response to this, Cllr Tom Montgomery said: “I completely appreciate the financial constraints this project has, and I completely understand you can’t make a room bigger than it is. But I am just concerned that it may appear that we are trying to restrict public access to our meetings.”
Council officer Sian Williams said she had no such concerns as it wasn’t very often the council had “huge amounts of the public” sitting in on a council meeting.
Cllr Chris Brockley then suggested on-street parking times might be tweaked on surrounding roads to allow councillors to attend long meetings without getting a parking ticket.
And Cllr Chris Hughes said there needed to be more thought given to parking as there were several schools and businesses nearby, and it was important people were able to park and visit the town.
The committee noted the plans and comments to make its recommendations to the council’s project board.
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