Harrogate Borough Council has defended its decision-making on its new civic centre following an investigation by The Stray Ferret.

After our reports were published on Monday morning, Harrogate Borough Council posted a series of tweets in response.

In response to articles published on the Stray Ferret website about the supposed cost of civic centre in #Harrogate, the articles are not accurate. The figures are based on a wide range of assumptions backed up by unnamed experts.

— Harrogate Borough Council (@Harrogatebc) July 13, 2020

As outlined in our reports, in the course of our investigation we contacted and interviewed a number of established, independent estate agents, architects and quantity surveyors. Each gave us their honest opinion based on their expertise but, as they all work in the local area, they asked us not to identify them in our reports.

Land value

The land at civic centre did not cost the council £4.5million. We already owned it, so the cost was £0. Including the assumed value of land when working out the cost of a building is not a methodology we ever used.

— Harrogate Borough Council (@Harrogatebc) July 13, 2020

The Stray Ferret has looked through all the available documents at the time, including the appraisal of the Hornbeam site and others. They sum up the council's view that none of them was as suitable as Knapping Mount.

Though the council can argue it did not spend any money on the Knapping Mount site because it already owned it, this misses a central point of our investigation. The land was potentially extremely valuable and, if sold, could have brought in sufficient income to buy and build on a cheaper site elsewhere, with resulting savings for taxpayers.

Without having achieved planning permission, the council could never have had a clear value of the land in order to make an informed decision about whether to sell it or build on it.

Other options

It is true that one of the sites we considered was at Hornbeam Park. A full appraisal of this option was put to cabinet and council in October 2014 and rejected as not viable. You can read more at: https://t.co/w0ZnpRLyyB

— Harrogate Borough Council (@Harrogatebc) July 13, 2020

What has never been released, however, is the full detail of those sites, how the costs were calculated and why they were dismissed as less favourable than Knapping Mount. A full report was done by an external consultant - but this has always been kept under wraps.

As outlined in our report, the council referred to areas including Pannal and Beckwith Knowle, but did not specify which sites, or whether they were buying buildings or land to build a new office on.

These details were never part of any public consultation or even discussion. Without this information being made public, local taxpayers are unable to judge whether the council made sensible use of their money.

Final costs

At the moment, we cannot reveal the final cost of the building as we have not agreed a final bill with the developer. It is now in receivership. We are waiting for an update from the official receiver. As soon as the final cost is known to us, it will be made public.

— Harrogate Borough Council (@Harrogatebc) July 13, 2020

The final cost of the build is only part of the picture. We know the contract was agreed at £11.5m and the council views that as the fixed cost. The contractor has argued for more money and only in time will we find out what has to be paid.

But there is more to it than that. The additional value of the land has never been discussed publicly, and nor have the costs of fitting out the building - everything from flooring to light fixtures, IT infrastructure and more. There is no reason why the council cannot release these details now, more than two-and-a-half years after the building was occupied, and we call on them to do so.

Savings

Civic centre represents excellent value for the council tax payer of the district. It saves us around £1million a year compared to running and maintaining the previous network of offices. This is money that was sorely needed to keep our public services running in recent months.

— Harrogate Borough Council (@Harrogatebc) July 13, 2020

The council argues that the civic centre saves £1m per year and we don't dispute that those savings have been made. However, any money saved was through reducing staff numbers, working on one site instead of five and moving to a modern, efficient building.

All of those savings could have been made with a move to any new office - it did not have to be Knapping Mount. A cheaper site and a cheaper build would have given the same results AND left taxpayers enjoying the benefit of the same savings.

Questions still to be answered

A number of key points in our investigation have still not received a response from HBC.

We found that their choice of a round building - designed to 'express the nature of democracy' - made the project more complex and therefore more expensive. The council has not defended this choice.

Nor has it responded to the continuing threat of devolution which could mean the new civic centre is no longer needed, or is too large or even too small for changing requirements in Harrogate in the next few years. These discussions began before the council committed to the new building and are continuing now:, with change expected within two years.

There has been no justification for the need for a town centre office, which dominated HBC's decision-making process and bumped up the cost of out-of-town options, as it argued it had to retain another central office as a customer service centre.

Finally, the council has still not explained why, when the Knapping Mount site was earmarked for housing, it did not attempt to get planning permission in order to asses the true value of that land before deciding to where to build the new civic centre. Without that, we can never know what the land could have been worth.