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The truths they don't want you to read....

Monday, November 30, 2009

Town Hall refurbishment

Stornoway Town Hall
Have a look at the application here, and the detailed plans, and be prepared to be shocked....

You can also use the on-line site to submit comments. I would strongly suggest that to make these as effective as possible, you do refer to planning matters, rather than just general abhorrence of the scheme.

The balcony remains, but the seating is to be removed and the floor levelled to create a Gallery and 'Flexible Function Area' (Doc 8).

The stage goes to create an 'Exhibition Area' with another 'Exhibition Area' under the balcony.

There is potentially to be a Cafe, although this doesn't appear on the plans and searching the online planning system is less easy than it should be, but I have one serious, major, concern about the whole scheme.....just what are we going to show in this new Exhibition Area?

I went to An Lanntair over the weekend and it was quiet, deadly quiet, just as it seems to be on the occasional instances that we go there for a drink. With the Council already making very, very, substantial deficit support payments for the facility, are they now going to create a competing space that will also require revenue funding, and a cafe that will compete with the cafe in the library (proprietors Comhairle nan Eilean Siar) as well as all the hard-pressed businessmen in town?

Or are they just going to approve the alterations and leave us with a building that doesn't deliver the purposes for which it was intended?

An Lanntair should - and must - make a profit from the commercial activities to put it on a level playing field with private business. It must do that for it's own sake, and to prove to the sceptical taxpayers that it can, before the Council provide another space for Gaelic Mime Artistes or for sculptures made of Mars Bars wrappers and engine parts to undermine a struggling business.

Or they could reinvent the Town Hall as a public space, for the public of the islands.

The plans need Listed Building Consent. The absence of public consultation on the most historic and significant public building in the Western Isles should be enough to delay or refuse the application, and allow us a chance for some say in what happens to this fine building.

No doubt the Stornoway Historical Society will have something to say about these plans, and no doubt the Councillors who are members of SHS will take due attention to what SHS has to say. ( I've lifted the picture off their excellent and informative website.)

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have known about this scheme for some time now but was waiting for the information to become public before mounting a campaign against it.

There is a facebook campaign group (search "save stornoway town hall").

The comhairle are using public money (at the sacrifice of other historic buildings in the town, and the construction industry in general) to move thier employees into the building.

Lord Leverhulmes deed state the building must be used for public use - taking the hall out of public use makes the building cease functioning as a community building.

The council need to go through Historic Scotland for listed building concent to warrant approval - we need to make representations directly to them to stand in the way of these proposals.

We shall too, start a petition against the scheme.

Anonymous said...

Don't think Leverhulme's Deed of Trust covered thhe Town Hall -If it did Stornoway Trust would be the owner. And I don't think your photo is of the present Town Hall- Looks more like the one which burned down........

Anonymous said...

The Town Hall wass paid for by Public Subscription so did not come under Leverhulme's deed of trust- if it did then Stornoway Trust would be the owner allthough the Trust did have offices in it. Your photo is of the first Town Hall which burned down......Pity history would not do the same with the crucifix on Sandwick Road?

Anonymous said...

The present Town Hall (not the one pictured) was paid for by public subscription and benefactors such as John Bain Chicago and T B Macaulay Montreal. It opened in 1929 and was owned by Stornoway Town Council- Nothing to do with Leverhulme. What woulld you expect of Planners who "approved" the Whitehouse on Sandwick Road. You also have a planning officer who describes the Stornoway Town Hall as being "out of context in the Hebrides"

Anonymous said...

Cannot comment in depth on this scheme, but anything that puts the Town Hall back into full(er) use should be applauded. It is a Listed Building, and major alterations will naturally be closely scrutinised by those whose job it is to do so.
With regards to An Lanntair, they really want to get their skates on and sort themselves out.

Anonymous said...

Why is this happening? I thought we were short of cash? I thought there were other more important pressing issues to deal with than trashing a building which is OUR historic town hall? I thought local businesses needed supporting not undermining? What is the hidden agenda here? or is it just plain ignorance? Please, please, please vote these people out at the next election, before there is nothing left.

Anonymous said...

Who is going to pay for this latest dream? I thought the cooncil was broke?
Not that I have a problem with the maintenance of the building, the cooncil track record at the Lews Castle was a big enough disgrace without another spell of destructive testing on the Islands' heritage, but do we need another gaelic mafia nest...will it ever be open on a Sunday?

Anonymous said...

Leverhulme ann neo as, I think there's going to be a strong backlash against this plan and rightly so. It is removing the building from the purposes for which it was created, having been paid for by public subscription. Nowhere else in Britain would a council try this, but then again the comhairle's track record in planning speaks for itself.

I don't want the Town Hall to be turned into an extension for Comhairle nan Eilean just because they don't have the imagination or the talent to do anything better with it. How long ago was it that there was talk of actually knocking it down? This is a further spreading out of inept bureaucracy at public expense (including the security swipe card doors), making a landmark building in the very centre of Stornoway poorer culturally and historically. And an 'exhibition space'? Is this to show the illustrious history of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar?

Anonymous said...

Can anyone say yet when the cafe will be up for grabs or do you need to know someone? I've always had a notion for running a cafe without any worries about funding it.

Dr Evadne said...

Angus

Who has the final say on planning permission? The Council/Councillors? If they have already decided to do this then its all a foregone conclusion. But questions must be asked concerning funding of this latest wheeze. Yesterday some of us spent the morning pretending our cars were Torvill & Dean on icy roads because some ape in Sandwick Road thought it would be okay to cut the speninding on Winter Maintenance. By all acccounts the elected members sat back and agreed.

How 11.42 reckons this scheme puts the building back to fuller use is beyond me. As you say Angus, a trip to the exhibition area in An Lanntair is usually underwhelming and seems to struggle to fill that area with anything worth looking at. The town hall became redundant the minute that An Lanntair opened and although something needs to be done about it should not be ear marked for spending when so many other areas within the remit of the Comhairle need cash. It makes you want to stick pencils up your nose and say 'wibble'.

Curious Chorch said...

How do you get hold of IP logs using blogger? I can't seem to find an option anywhere in settings. Best I can find is advice to use http://statcounter.com and that only allows you to take a guess from what I can tell, but I guess if the comments are far enough apart yo can be pretty sure. Have I answered my own question?!

Angus said...

Curious Chorch,

As a consequence of some deliberate attempts at political sabotage, I use two other pieces of tracking software which are not perfect for logging IP addresses.

Where the sheer incompetence of the poster allows you to match the sole IP on the site with a comment being posted and the IP is a Scottish Parliament address then you have a pretty good match.

There is another - better - way, but I'm not going to disclose that at the moment. Unless people deny their involvement. :-))

Anonymous said...

Any idea why 6 directors of An Lanntair resigned during November 2009??? Just how bad are the Management Accounts that they are running. And guess who has now been appointed as a director, the illustrious Brian Wilson :-)

Anonymous said...

Don’t trust the planners on this one…. They don’t refuse much as can be seen by some of the monstrosities and badly placed houses dotted around the Island. This will get approved unless there is sufficient opposition.

The Council are short of space, they need to grab any building they can and they’ve a duty to preserve the buildings in their care. So from one side they if they can bring this building into day to day use for the community then this is a good thing – even if it is to pay your Council Tax or some other mundane task. It can’t be just maintaianed for a xmas panto and the odd bring & buy sale, buildings need to be used or they degrade very quickly. However ripping a stage out of a building like this is a one way road and very, very careful thought coupled with public consultation needs to take place before this goes ahead. Personally I don’t think this has happened and a 3 week window to object to the plans is far from sufficient.

Anonymous said...

Are there not offices lying empty at Gleann Seileach??

Anonymous said...

They need listed building consent - complain to historic Scotland.

When you talk about funding - the council took millions out of the local construction industry by ditching a committment to save another historic building in the town to raid its funds to pay for their offices in town hall - mainlybecause CnES botched up the forms for their own funding...

Dont belive me - look at the council meeting minutes (oh, under the part where public and press were told to leave).

Anonymous said...

I see the usual pro-Sunday ferry contingent are up in arms again - this time about the plans to modernise the town hall. Publicly owned Calmac pushed through its plans with total disregard for the community. What's the difference if the Council do it?
Make a sentence with chickens, home, roost.

Madbiker said...

3:55 Please do not use unversal generalisations unless you know they are correct. In this case, as so often they and you are wrong. I am one of the pro Sunday ferries but am totally ambivalent about what happens to the town hall. It needs to be used and it will need modernising. The conflict is what will be allowed and what will be done.
When modernising a building, how often has it been trashed in the name of modernity? Equally, if it is not used then it may as well be bulldozed. Pantos and craft fares do not consitute sufficient use of it.

ADB said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Got to admit that the town hall does now look stunning from the outside though, noticed it today during a brief lull in the constant S.E gales.

The same gale is probably in the process of removing another dozen slates off the castle roof.

Anonymous said...

So long as a certain councillor doesn't somehow have the contract awarded to his first cousin, the worst roofer this side of Kazakhstan...

Anonymous said...

Much of the recent comment from the save the town hall campaign is actually very good and deserves more press coverage and support. If the £30k cost mentioned in some reports is indeed the cost to the council, then that is less than half of what it costs them for the Lanntair subsidy which does not provide as big a venue, and is too expensive for most community groups to afford. For most voluntary community groups, they don't have the luxury of salaried positions or subsidies and graft away for no payment for most of the year to make things happen. That is why it is essential to save the current capacity provision of the largest community venue in Stornoway.