Warwick District Council: New Offices

Robert Courts Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered new offices for Warwick District Council.

Thank you, Mr Howarth, for giving me the opportunity to debate this issue, which is of immediate concern to residents in Warwick district, which includes my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, part of the neighbouring constituency of Kenilworth and Southam and part of the Stratford constituency.

At first glance, this debate will seem parochial, but it has much wider implications for local authorities across the country. It is fundamentally about the use of public money, and how local authorities use planning legislation for their own ends—using public money to build, in this example, a new council office, at a time of austerity. There are huge pressures on local authorities to restructure, to consider merging and to close certain services. We have seen our children’s centres and women’s refuges close. My question therefore is: are these the right priorities?

The issue at hand is the proposal for Warwick District Council to relocate from its current site near the centre of Leamington town centre to another site it owns in the town centre. It is a joint planning application that includes the development of a site for housing, which will contain 214 new homes in total, and of offices at the Covent Garden site, which will incorporate a new multi-storey car park, replacing the existing car park that occupies that site.

At last night’s planning meeting, both applications were approved. I do not agree with those approvals, and nor do the public. Why is the council building a new office in the first place? That has to be the first question.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

Perhaps the council is seeking to move to offices that are smaller, cheaper and more efficient, which will enable it to provide the public services that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and mine want.

[Matt Western]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. At a time when local authorities are restructuring under the pressure of budgetary restraint, that could be an option, but there are other options, such as moving into vacant buildings that the authority owns. He is right to highlight that point, and I will come on to develop it.

How can a council that is likely to impose a 3% council tax increase in April, alongside other council tax increases that will mean a total rise of perhaps 7% to 8% for council tax payers, justify using scarce resources to build itself a shiny new office? Its sister county council has the necessary vacant space and is closing much-valued children’s centres, claiming that that is not what councils should be doing and that they should simply contract out delivery services. The council’s justifications include the fact that the offices are just 500 metres closer to the town centre and that they might be more economical to run. It claims that the move will be cost-neutral and could save £300,000 a year, but given my recent experience of its projects, including leisure centres, that will be wide of the mark.

There are three main issues: the development lacks provision for affordable housing, which is so desperately needed in the area; it is the wrong priority at a time of austerity; and it will disrupt car parking in Leamington town centre, and ultimately the viability of town centre businesses. In essence, it is the wrong development at the wrong time in the wrong place.

I want to touch on the issue of affordable homes. Some people may believe that the new office is critical at a time of economic austerity, and that the arguments of better heating and efficiency justify the £10 million spent, but then we discover that the council office project is being funded by the disposal of its current site for the exclusive development of private housing. In fact, the planning applications for the Riverside House and Covent Garden sites total more than 200 dwellings, but none of them will be council, social or affordable—zero council, zero social and zero affordable housing.

Remember that the two applications were made by the council for the council. What about the council’s own policy—the policy it wrote itself and specified in its own local plan—that 40% of properties on large new housing developments should be affordable housing? To be clear, large is anything greater than 10, so given that there will be 170 and 44 on the two sites, they comfortably qualify. It is clear that with these applications —approval has been outlined—the council is failing to meet its own standards for affordable housing, which it seeks to place on other developers. What sort of precedent is that setting?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Gentleman spoke about a challenging fiscal environment. The proposal, to which he has referred to fairly, is intended to save £300,000 per year, but surely that is precisely why it should be pursued—it will enable more money to be spent on the services that people want.

[Matt Western]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point but his conclusion is wrong. There is a huge opportunity for all local authorities. His Government previously proposed One Public Estate, which was a genuine and sincere ambition to get authorities around the table to review all public assets and decide how they can best be used for the future delivery of services. The Warwick proposal is an example of where that has not happened. I proposed a “one Warwickshire estate” a couple of years ago. Had it happened, the district council could have been using its existing assets or those of its sister councils such as the county council.

The council should be using any capital budgets to build much-needed council housing to address the 2,400-long housing waiting list. Moving the council headquarters is not a priority for the people in my constituency or in Kenilworth, and it should not be a priority for the council at this time.

The effect of the development on the Covent Garden car park will also have an impact on our community. It will lead to the closure of a much-needed car park, one of the four main ones in our town centre. The closure for redevelopment will result in a lack of car parking space in our town centre and therefore a huge amount of pressure on the economic viability of the town centre and the businesses therein. In any event, while building a car park, there should be some sort of workable displacement plan for parking during the construction period, but none has been put forward.

Indeed, no other options have been put forward to the public, but they should be explored. The council should consider the use of existing space in the public asset register that I mentioned a moment ago, such as empty and underutilised office space owned by the county council, or even Leamington town hall, which is owned by Warwick District Council. That would reduce the cost and allow for the development of affordable housing on the Riverside House site, as well as avoiding the demolition of one of our main car parks in Leamington. If the council must push ahead with the plans, it should at least find some way of meeting its own affordable housing policy for both developments and on those two sites.