Sutton Council has rejected a plan to close its district offices and relocate staff under one roof – saying the £15 million costs were too high in the current financial climate.
Preliminary research had suggested the council could make savings if it shut its offices including Denmark Road, The Lodge, The Grove and Stonecourt in Carshalton Village and instead house the workers in the Civic Offices in Sutton.
But when presented with the full business case for the “Smarter Working” project, members of the Executive have just said it would not be appropriate to spend the money at the current time.
Cllr. John Drage, Sutton Council’s Executive Member for Finance and Efficiency, said: “Now is not the right time to spend such a large amount of taxpayers’ money, given the current economic climate and tough financial times we are all facing.
“There are simply too many variables beyond our control. There are economic factors, uncertainty over the property market, government housing reforms and question marks over the cost of borrowing, which mean we have to be cautious.”
The council is currently carrying out a review, called Smarter Services Sutton, of everything it does to see if it can do things in a different, less costly and more effective way.
At its meeting earlier this week, the Executive agreed that once the majority of these reviews have been implemented it would have a better idea of the council’s accommodation needs over the coming years.
Cllr. Drage said: “We will then have a clearer idea of what accommodation we require and which buildings could be vacated and found alternative uses for.”
Cllr. Ruth Dombey, the council’s Deputy Leader, added: “We have thought long and hard about this. In simplistic terms, we have several council buildings and it would seem there is money to be saved by reducing that number.
“But in this economic climate, going ahead with the full blown business case does not seem to be the sensible thing to do. We need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a different solution.
“It has been a very useful exercise and we have met a lot of different groups, especially in Carshalton Village, who have come up with some very interesting ideas about possible uses for some of our buildings which we could return to in the future.”
The Smarter Working project was considered because the Civic Offices building is now over 30 years old and its electrics, lighting, heating and ventilation systems need replacing. The work would have increased the number of staff able to work at the Civic Offices in Sutton Town Centre from 612 to 1,165.