Another £95m needed to finish Manchester Town Hall

Wouldn’t it be great if we could just click our fingers and cost and programme overspends were just absorbed and signed off without accountability. Just like factory; who owns the responsibility! Why is no one accountable for these vast overspends of public money right on our doorstep.

That’s a shocking amount of money!

Can’t wait to see it after all these years – everything they’ve done so far looks amazing. Pleased they’re restoring it properly even though it is expensive

Surely the global pandemic, high inflation in the construction industry and hidden issues within the building’s historic fabric were known *before* October 2024 when the last budget was increased? Yes most projects overrun and get overbudget, but this additional £95mil just one year later is ridiculous when there’s nothing new they can blame as ‘unforseen’.

Licence to print money!

This sums this country up.

Manchester Comedy Council. Unbelievable.

£95m ! Very self indulgent. Remind me what value the public will get out of this apart from a warm fuzzy feeling of restoring a building to which we the hoi polloi will only have access to 10% of.

Should have done what the Coop Live owners did and put penalties in for the construction company, keep them honest and on task. That’s probably the difference between American owners and how we do things in the UK

Utter joke this. And yet I bet they start crying about being underfunded. There’s also a farce that was Aviva Studios as well.

Its about time the vast amounts of money spent in London are spent in other UK cities too. This expenditure wouldn’t even stir a reaction for a London Grade 1 listed building.

State a lower figure to get buy-in/start then cost rises during project delivery – absolutely zero accountability. And people wonder why the economy is in the state it is and the UK cannot do infrastructure projects with such an endemic mentality.

What did you expect from a labour run council?!

It damn well better had look good for half a billion of tax payers money. Heads would have rolled in the accountable private sector

In times of public spending constraints this is a travesty.

MCC can’t keep the streets clean and tidy, remove graffiti and tagging off walls, and maintain the paving and roads across the city. But they can spend over half a billion pounds on the town hall.

I’m not surprised by the latest round of excuses: “inflation, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine” – what that has to do with the price of fish is anyone’s guess. Now we hear: “shortage of specialist labour, collapse of suppliers, material delays, and discovery of further construction challenges.” Who would have thought it – a 150-year-old building has challenges?
I’ve been involved in a £150m project in Manchester. It’s due to hand over two months early after four years of navigating the same complexities. The difference? Accountability. A private funder, a private developer, and a team that knows if they don’t deliver, they don’t have a business.
Complex projects will always have bumps. But those risks should be factored in – not used as a convenient excuse to string along a client with “unforeseen issues” and whatever fashionable narrative fits the moment.
If there are no consequences, why not keep taking the cash? Look at Manchester Library—that should have been a warning. Misplaced pride, hubris, and lack of accountability from city leadership will always deliver the same result.
Public projects need the same discipline and accountability as private ones. Without it, overruns and delays aren’t surprises—they’re inevitabilities.

It does seem like a lot of money but the construction industry has been particularly hard hit by escalating costs so it’s not a surprise. This is probably Manchester’s most iconic buildings and shouldn’t be allowed to fall inot disrepair and become dangerous. There are always things that are found in a project like on a historic building which add to the costs and you can’t blame anyone for this. It[‘s just the way it is. I can’t wait to see it when the works complete.

This is when you can see we have moved from a country of extreme wealth (when this was built) to now a mediocre western country with a weak economy. Maintaining historic assets like this, the Victorian railways and sewers, and the 1960s motorways are a real challenge for the UK.

How come Rochdale managed to refurbish its town hall without problem or delay?

The original is £330m to complete but they want more money to add £95m for what? By tax payment for what? It absolutely tip off the town hall is absolutely ridiculous.

I know! Build more homes to generate more council tax payments. Uh uh, they will be building on greenbelt land & worsen the present flooding issues 😳

I totally agree with the comment that the council cannot blame covid, Ukraine etc just 12 months since the last massive overspend, but i will disagree with the comment that ‘heads would roll in the private sector’ it is far more likely that massive bonuses would be paid regardless of success.

Half a billion… I truly wonder where all the money has gone.

This type of stuff really lets the city down. Why is there not penalties on public funded projects FULL STOP. The money we are talking about here…. imagine all the things you could do with the £160m overspend.

Anon 12.54pm – HS2 overspend and mismanagement, what did you expect from a tory government?

Money wasted everywhere management clueless. More about ticking boxes than anything else.

I’m not surprised at the rising costs. Having worked on a much smaller listed heritage building during and just after covid I know first hand how labour and material costs massively increased. Specialist consultancy fees also went through the roof. A healthy contigency was in place to deal with unexpected building issues which are common in heritage building but even this wasn’t enough leading to the project being overspent. If the industry and commentators want cost certainty we need to get rid of historic buildings and build new dull office blocks using design and build contracts.

Surprise surprise, the same developer that was forced to remediate cladding on Manchester apartment blocks is now again asking for more money to finish the job

It’s undeniably a world-class building, but Manchester taxpayers should never have been on the hook for the whole cost. Support should have come from Westminster, the National Lottery or perhaps even private donors. Has MCC ever said what the annual loan repayments will be?
Hopefully now office space in the Town Hall will be fit-for-use again. MCC can recoup something by renting out space in the Town Hall Extension, previously given an expensive refurb, which is now frequently deserted due to WfH. Or do something with the showpiece Rates Hall/Customer Service Centre which never reopened post-pandemic.

Albert Square in front of Manchester Town Hall. What has Albert got to do with Manchester? Just as daft as “Piccadilly” Station. Why not call it Suffragette Square or Chartist Square? Something Manchester folk can be rightly proud of.

Historic buildings cost lots of money – Shock horror!

Stop moaning or knock it down.

For 1/2 a billion, knock it down. It’s not worth that.

The commercial procurement from the beginning was poorly advised and now the council is tied in. Cost plus rather than penalties

Steve 5839 sounds brilliant…….we obviously need him on every job…….come on Steve how relevant is your 150 mill super scheme……usual trolling I suspect

Let’s hope they allow open days for the tax payers. MCC Need to consider using a non Tier 1 contractor to keep the prelims and cost down in future on renovation projects. Licence to print money.

How does a project like this cost so much. A disgraceful waste of tax payer money by the socialist Burnham

Notre Dame cost £650m to rebuild. That it now open. Our lot can’t even refurbish a town hall and it has cost almost the same and isn’t even finished. Shameful.

Just shows how uselessly our taxes are spent by the public sector. How does a facelift of a town hall cost over half a BILLION pounds?

A lot off the comments are not about the Town Hall they are political as usual, you have two choices, refurbishment or demolishing

And in my community of 36 flats, we asked for an extra communal waste bin as just one wasn’t sufficient for 36 flats and was told no money for an extra bin. I’m glad tax payers money is being spent first on the things that really help the tax payer.

Hi Steve5839, was the project you worked on a 150 year-old, 250,000 sq ft Grade 1 listed building by any chance? I guess not for the very reason that such projects tend to be too risky and complex for the private sector to fund and embark upon. And when they do, there are the same challenges and cost overruns, witness the refurbishment of St Pancras hotel, budgeted at £60m, eventually compete at over £200m and this was a much less complex and sensitive building and delivered pre-Covid, pre-Ukraine.

With approx 522,000 residents thats roughly £1,000 per head for the cost of this refurb.

Disgusting
Labour throws money at everything. They won’t get in again. They are a disgrace.

Someone at Manchester City Council is all in and out of control.

Should never have come to this. A stronger leader would have clamped this down.

Two things stand out to me:
1) Could the building have been sold or partially sold to the private sector who could have used it for office space
) As one post stated here. How can the restoration of Notre Dame cost as much almost as Manchester’s city Hall? Seems extreme to me considering how much damage Notre Dame incurred
3) Why wasn’t the building left in such state for so many years that it needed these expensive repairs? Didn’t the council have a plan to maintenance and improvements that could have been rolled out over decades? Why wasn’t there no long term planning?

Been cheaper to demolish it

On my last visit to Manchester i was amazed at all the workforce just wandering round, i noticed it took four men, twenty minutes to cut a length of pipe. One of them to cut, one either end holding it and a supervisor to watch over them all. No wonder its costing millions.

Skint – It will be another 100 years before the Town Hall needs this kind of work therefore on your calculations it works out as £10 a year per resident. Sounds like value for money.

Graham you are right alot of the comments are politically motivated for example blaming Burnham for the overspend on a Manchester Council project shows the ignorance about his role, the man’s got nothing to do with this contract. You are also right in that the council had two choices demolish or refurbishment, can you imagine the outcry if they chose to demolish the Town Hall. I am sure questions are being asked about the cost overspend but I suspect they had little alternative once the project started.

Manchester City Council is very comedy.

The procurement process and content of the contract are simply not fit for purpose.
For the budget to go up by 23% (£76M) and then by a further 29% (£95M) a year later, plus another 7% (£23.8M) somewhere along the way, i.e., 59% overall, is simply incompetent, irresponsible, and immoral.
I fully support the renovation of this amazing building, but those involved in controlling the finances and commercial elements of it, need questioning, when public money is frittered away in such a way.

The contractor has has royally taken the council to the cleaners on this job. Absolutely scandalous in terms of delays and originally projected costs & timescales