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The cost of refurbishing Preston’s Harris Museum has “spiralled out of control” – but local taxpayers will not have to foot the bill, councillors have been told.
A meeting of Preston City Council’s overview and scrutiny committee heard contingency funds had been insufficient to bridge the financial gap that has ballooned within the £16.2m budget for the project.
The extent of the shortfall was deemed commercially confidential and so was not revealed during the public part of the gathering. However, members were assured that external funding had been sought to cover the overspend – which was blamed on inflation and a spike in construction costs – meaning the council’s own coffers would be largely unscathed.
Committee members were also given an update on when the transformed Grade I-listed attraction is expected to reopen.
Cabinet member for culture and arts Anna Hindle said the authority was “working towards” welcoming visitors by “spring/summer 2025”. However, she also alluded to a potential “issue” which she said could be discussed only in the private session of the meeting.
The building closed in October 2021 for a wholesale revamp to create what was described as the country’s first “blended” museum, art gallery and library.
The doors were originally expected to be back open again sometime during 2024, but last October, the Local Democracy Reporting Service revealed that a series of setbacks – including the discovery of unexpected areas of asbestos – had pushed the relaunch back to next spring.
On the need for extra cash to complete the work, Cllr Hindle told the scrutiny committee: “The cost of the project has spiralled out of control due to various issues such as…inflation. We have asked for additional [financial] support, which we now know the answer to.”
The city council’s deputy chief executive, Sarah Threlfall, said the usual financial buffers had been built in at the start of the scheme to cover any additional costs – but that they had not “come anywhere near” being enough.
“We’ve had hyper-inflation…[and] the cost of materials has increased enormously over the lifetime of the project – above and beyond anything that any usual contingency could ever have anticipated or met,” Ms. Threlfall explained.
Committee chair John Potter said the public’s concern would be: “Who’s footing that bill and how much is [of it] is coming out of Preston City Council taxpayers’ pockets?”
Sarah Threlfall told the meeting that “the vast majority is not being met by…taxpayers, because there is external funding being put in place”.
A slide presented to the meeting noted that an application for “additional support” had been made to the Heritage Lottery Fund, but confirmation of the outcome – and whether the entire shortfall has yet been covered – were also reserved for discussion in the private part of the committee.
However, Cllr Hindle revealed that a report recently considered by the city council had asked the city council to “underwrite the project”. The budget for the ‘Harris Your Place’ scheme was discussed in a confidential section of the full council meeting held in May.
The document on the agenda that day remains unpublished, but minutes of that meeting state that approval was sought – and received – for “arrangements…in order to complete the project”.
The scrutiny committee heard from Cllr Hindle that talks with the Arts Council – one of the funders of the scheme – had revealed that The Harris refurb was “not as in debt as a lot of…other projects throughout the country”.
It is the second time the budget for the scheme has risen – with the original cost estimate being £10m.
However, Sarah Threlfall said the initial increase to £16.2m “wasn’t about overspending”, but rather taking the opportunity to do further work – on the like of the boilers and windows – during what would be a once-in-a-generation project.
Preston City Council and Lancashire County Council – which rents space in the building to house the largest of Lancashire’s libraries – covered around a third of that additional £6.2m cost. The remainder came from a share of the cash Preston received from the government’s Towns Fund, along with contributions from organisations including the Arts Council.
The original budget was funded from various sources, including the two local authorities and the Heritage Lottery Fund, whose £4.5m grant was key to getting the so-called “reimagining” scheme off the ground.
The plan is for the reopened 131-year-old venue to generate income by once again hosting weddings and also hiring out new conference space and offering catering facilities for “aperitifs”.
Large lift a ‘loss’
Plans to install a second lift in the new-look Harris have had to be scrapped, because the foundations of the building are not deep enough.
However, fears that the decision would limit the size of the exhibitions the museum can accommodate have so far not been realised, the overview and scrutiny committee was told.
Sarah Threlfall acknowledged that the planned elevator – which would have been larger than the existing one, which was always intended to remain in place – was “a loss to the project”.
But she added: “[While] it will be more challenging to have those bigger touring exhibitions…we’ve not had any cancellations [and] we’ve not had to change our plans in terms of exhibitions.
“We have got contingencies around how we get stuff [upstairs]. There is better circulation around the building than there has been historically.”
Ms. Threlfall said the main impact of having to ditch the lift would be on disabled access, which, while still being “complaint with what’s required, isn’t what we would have wanted if we’d been able to do something different”.
However, a ‘changing places’ toilet for people with disabilities and complex needs will still be installed as part of the revamp – and the committee heard that its location means the facility will be accessible even when the venue is closed.
Committee member Cllr Mel Close welcomed the news, saying it would encourage disabled people into the city centre to attend other events if they knew they could rely on specially-adapted toilet in The Harris being open.
A book and a bite
The scrutiny committee was shown images of how the new open-plan library will look, with Cllr Hindle describing it as having “more flexibility” than before.
Committee member Stephen Thompson queried the absence of security barriers to prevent books being taken away before they had been signed out.
Sarah Threlfall said that while security measures would be in place, the “bigger challenge” was trying to entice more people “who might not normally use libraries”.
To that end, books will even be available in the cafe to enable visitors to read while they eat.
Harris bill breakdown
Prior to the most recent, unspecified, increase in the budget, this is how the cost of refurbishing the Harris Museum had been split up:
£10m – originally-conceived scheme (includes £4.5m National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, £1m from Preston City Council, £1m from Lancashire County Council and contributions from the Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire City Deal, the Friends of the Harris group and public donations)
£2.1m – additionally-agreed funding to date from Preston City Council and Lancashire County Council
£1.9m – from Preston’s £20.9m share of the government’s Towns Fund
£803K – Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Museum Estates Development Fund
£585K – Arts Council Capital Investment Programme
£450K – Wolfson Foundation/Garfield Weston Trust
£250K – National Lottery Heritage Fund grant uplift
£100K – Local trusts and foundations already supporting the project
£30K – Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Changing Places Fund
