Amber Valley Borough Council to sell HQ
Amber Valley Borough Council is to put it 54,000 sq ft headquarters up for sale, after a review in its working practices meant large parts of the building were left empty. The Nottingham office of King Sturge has been appointed to sell or lease the property, which is in Ripley.
The council said staff numbers were set to fall even further because of the changes to the benefits system, and so the authority no longer required such a large premises. It also said it might look at offloading the 19th century Town Hall building as part of the property deal.
Councillor Stuart Bradford, leader of the council. said: “The building is a major fixed cost against our revenue budget. We always said we’d explore every possible option at making savings and this would be too big an opportnity to ignore to make a potentially huge step towards meeting the financial challenges we face. The government has also recommended that we should review our assets and look to share facilities with other organisations.”
Bradford added that if Amber Valley Borough Council does vacate the building entirely or partially, the authority’s priority would be to ensure that another organisation can occupy the building sufficiently enough to continue to support the local economy and to support regeneration in Ripley.
