Third of a million spent on furniture at Castlewood

Third of a million spent on furniture at Castlewood

NORTH Somerset Council has spent almost a third of a million pounds on furniture for its new offices in Clevedon.

The North Somerset Times has learned through a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) that the council has spent more than �329,000 on furnishing Castlewood.

The council confirmed that all existing chairs from the Town Hall in Weston were reused as well as the meeting room and ancillary furniture, where appropriate.

However, the majority of desks and storage furniture have been replaced as the council said most of it would not have survived the move.

The report states: “Much of it would not have survived being dismantled, transferred and reassembled - with associated transfer costs.

“Existing furniture was of such differing size, shape and quality its use would not maximise the use of space and the letting of space to partners/tenants is to be undertaken on a ‘serviced office’ basis, which means the council provides the desks as part of its arrangements with partners, and using modern furniture is the most cost effective method of supporting this.”

The council added that the use of modern bench style furniture has increased the capacity of Castlewood by 40 per cent and, as a result, also increased the potential income from partners or tenants.

North Somerset spent �12.6million on purchasing the building from HBOS and the authority is expecting to spend �14.6million on the move overall. One million pounds has so far been spent on fitting out the offices and doing repairs to the building.

Employees started moving in at the beginning of November and the offices are expected to be fully operational by the new year with 558 staff.