Budget for Manchester’s ‘once-in-a-century’ town hall project increases by £76m
Inflation, the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine have all contributed to the cost of the complex heritage restoration project rising from £353.8m to £429.8m, the city council said.
Manchester City Council’s executive will meet on 16 October to approve increasing the budget for the redevelopment of Manchester Town Hall by £76m.
The budget increase will be funded through long-term borrowing. The £49m contingency buffer written into the original appraisal has proved to be insufficient.
The soaring cost of the scheme, understood to be the largest of its type in the UK currently, comes as no surprise given the economic headwinds of recent years.
The upheaval since 2020 also impacted another Manchester City Council project – Factory International – which saw its budget increase to £100m more than the original estimate.
An update from the city council on the Our Town Hall project said that long-term heritage schemes “span several economic cycles, which makes the landscape they will be delivered in difficult to predict at the point when they are being planned”.
The volatile economy is not the only reason a budget increase is required. Discoveries within the 19th century building during the project have caused delays and pushed the cost upwards.
Since the last formal update in July 2023, when the city council reported rising costs and a two year delay, “not a single week has passed without another issue being unearthed that has time and cost implications”, the authority said.
At present, the estimated completion date for the project is July 2026.
Deputy city council leader Councillor Garry Bridges said the budget increase is a “testing moment” but that the project will “stand the test of time”.
“This is a once-in-a-century undertaking which will benefit the city for many decades to come. The end result will be worth the wait.
“We will give this iconic building and Albert Square back to the people of Manchester not just in the best shape since they were created but more welcoming and more accessible so everyone can enjoy and share in their history and heritage for generations to come.
He added: “The challenges and complications involved have increased costs and of course this is not where we wanted to be. But failure to carry out essential work on the town hall, allowing it to slip into disrepair, decay and disuse, would have been more costly in the long-run without creating anything like the same positive legacy for the city.
“We look forward to sharing the results of this project. They will become increasingly evident over the months ahead as sections are completed, scaffolding is removed and more of the enlarged square is restored to public use. Most of all we look forward to throwing open the doors of the town hall to the people of Manchester and a programme of re-opening events is being developed.”
Jeepers. Manchester could be the next Birmingham at this rate…
By John W
A consultants dream project
By Anon
This plus Factory (original budget – £110m, outturn cost £245m) – two projects – circa £200m over budget. No-one else in the development industry has experienced the same quantum of overspend and we have all worked in the same challenging environment as the Council.
By Anonymous
A fabulous Victorian building worthy of this investment. Designed by a Liverpudlian.
By Stephen Hart
You’d be furious as a Council Tax payer in Manchester. There’s not a shortage of Grade A office space in the city is there? A very costly vanity project.
By Anonymous
Between this and Aviva studios, how much overspend? Just shy of £200 million?
By Growth
all while each and every suburb of Manchester goes into decline so that they can paint lipstick on the city centre
By Anonymous
Still worth every penny. A beautiful landmark building that is going to be protected for another 100 years
By Steve
When it started no one would have anticipated the impact of 2 years of high inflation. If it fell down in ruins amd replaced with a glass box there would be uproar. It’s the greatest building in Manchester and it’s heart. But yes local and government budgets should be more accountable. Like HS2 and others everything costs more when it’s not private money
By Tomo
Complete and utter waste of 500,000,000 pounds. That would of kept us pensioners warm in Manchester
By Anonymous
Never nice to say, but heads should roll for this at the Council. Who is responsible for the project from a delivery point of view? This plus the Factory is an absolute shambles. How can you get two major projects so wrong? It is embarrassing stuff.
By Mr Mcr
Welcome to the world of Construction Management Consultants….
By anonymous
One of the grandest buildings in the UK by far.
As for the comments on MCC, it could be worse. We could be Liverpool or Birmingham.
By Anonymous
While it seems rational that such an iconic building should be preserved, it feels slightly surreal to hear of how much they need to spend, how many hundreds of thousands of square feet of prime office space is required in this era of public sector working from home. Will they repurpose it for startups or something?
By Desmond
This won’t be the last of it, with 2 years to go we could be looking at £600m+, beautiful building, but cost management is shocking.
By Top Cat MCR
It can be unanimously agreed that the overspend on big projects in this city has been staggering. More so for the Factory as it’s possibly the most expensive boulder ever built. But this town hall is an architectural masterpiece, preserving it for future generations is crucial, what’s the alternative?
By anon
Re Steve at 8.55 am. Totally agree with you. Manchester has lost far too many fine buildings since the 1950’s / 60’s which we will never get back.
To think there were plans in place to knock it down after WW11 and replace it with an anonymous red brick building.
By Peter Chapman
The Town Hall is wonderful, but there has never really been a case made for why the local Council Tax payers of Manchester should have been on the hook for £358 million, and now at least £429 million, for what is effectively a heritage attraction, some wedding and function rooms, and some very, very expensive office space upstairs which may or may not now work in an era of WfH and hotdesking and will leave the Town Hall Extension even more deserted than it is now.
MCC has already shown it doesn’t actually want its residents coming in and bothering it, which is why it still hasn’t reopened the Customer Service Centre in the Extension – previously given an expensive restoration – 3 years after lockdown ended.
By Uncle Albert
Re Anonymous at 9.45 am.
I thought northerners just put a jumper on if it was cold!
By Peter Chapman
The scaffold bill probably cost £76m
By Anon
It’s a lot but you can’t really put a price on some things. I’ve seen a lot of people bashing the cost of this lately but would bet they’d be the first to throw blame if it fell into disrepair
By Anonymous
Worth every penny, the alternative of letting it fall down is just not palatable.
By Anonymous
Considered the best town hall in the UK by many, this building is a tourist attraction in its own right.
By Anonymous
A one party state without meaningful opposition can spend whatever it likes. The voters of Manchester get what they deserve
By Reformist
I’ve just lost track of this now but wasn’t the cost of renovating the House of Commons anywhere between £7billion and £22 billion excluding inflation!
The timescales were unbelievably long as well I seem to recall.
By Peter Chapman
Not ideal but the work had to be done to this beautiful building – the most iconic in Manchester, Factory however is another thing – an expensive and not very attractive potential white elephant
By Gill
It’s not that the work didn’t need to be done – it’s that the taxpayers in the long thin sliver of GM that is the City of Manchester have had to borrow what will probably end up being nearer £500 million to fix up something of great beauty and historic importance to a wider area, but which doesn’t really have much relevance to providing council services in a difficult climate.
If the famous Grade 1 Listed heritage asset was in the centre of London it’s unlikely the local authority it happened to sit in would have to pay for the whole thing, and there’s no way increased visitor numbers will be generate much more income.
This might have been an opportunity to reimagine what the Town Hall is for, and look for external funding on that basis, but instead we seem to have the typical MCC approach to big capital schemes, of throw money at the thing and hope it works out in the end. Perhaps they are hoping to sell the naming rights?
By Uncle Albert
The funding for capital investments like this is completely separate from that for day to day services which has been slashed by central government funding cuts.
What would people have happen here? Do we want it to deteriorate to the point of dereliction or being rendered unsafe? Our most prized building? That’s the point that they’re rapidly approaching with the Houses of Parliament where the dysfunction of central government repeatedly fails to grasp the nettle.
By Anonymous
MCC Could always ask Renaker for some S.106 contributions (for once) and put these towards this cost, especially as they are about to agree two new S.106 agreements with them.
By Anonymous
Re. Anon 9.13 – Saying that revenue and capital spending for councils is entirely different and that’s the end of it is incorrect, although it’s a mistake people who know a bit about the subject often make, and sometimes councils muddy the water when justifying things like Aviva Studios.
Unless the capital spend comes direct from Government and is ringfenced to spend on a specific thing, or is from a capital receipt that can similarly only be spent as per legislation – as far as I know neither is the case here in any significant way – then its a political choice by MCC to spend the money on its palace on other capital schemes, or not spend it at all.
Capital spend when funded from borrowing isn’t magic free money, and has to be paid back from elsewhere in the budget, unless it generates its own income stream to cover it, also apparently not the case here.
By Uncle Albert
Maybe the naysayers here should reflect on the totally dysfunctional approach to the Palace of Westminster, which is so in need of renovation it’s verging on unsafe, but not politician wants to grab that multi-billion pound bill. In a few years people may ironically look back on this as another example of strong leadership and execution in Manchester.
By Rich X
The comments on here are insane. There was no alternative option and you all know that Bernstein and leese will have explored every available option including other uses such as hotels etc. I guess the bigger here and at a Iva is that the Bernstein rigour through implementation has not been applied and the previous CX didn’t take snobby responsibility for either project. Prudential borrowing terms will ease the blow but it was either this or let the building fall down. MCC is regularly slagged off on here for not caring about heritage……when it displays love ……guess what? Yes……it gets slagged off!! As I say insane
By Anonymous
MCC should have got JD Wetherspoon to oversee this refurb. Would have been half the time and half the cost and ended up looking the same at the end. Council aren’t ever really arsed to lose other ppls money.
By CB