It’s not something 2026 discourse is altogether comfortable with, but it’s hard to attribute much blame in any direction for the ongoing Preston Guild Hall saga.
It was announced today that Preston City Council would spend the next year trying to source external funding to build a brand-new, modern venue. They will, at the same time, get costs together to repair the roof of the existing venues. They hope to have a venue open, one way or another, by 2032.
Preston City Council will absorb all of the anger for anything other than a brand-new venue being confirmed when it comes to the Guild Hall – and some will perceive it as further delaying a resolution.
But they are not to blame for the city’s proximity to Manchester and Liverpool as leisure destinations, for local authorities being stripped of the vast majority of their resources since 2010, for it being built with a material with a lifespan of less than half of one healthy human, for Spotify-induced rocketing ticket prices meaning people still go to shows just not as many, or for the closure of 53 Degrees – something that for those of us who went to gigs in the 00s was a bigger deal.
The only thing you might accuse them of is hyping up today’s announcement as part of the budget only to confirm that they’re doing what we assumed they were doing anyway.
But it remains frustrating and a source of ongoing shame that even mid-level acts snub Preston but regularly appear in Lancaster and Blackpool. Even Blackburn!
All of that makes a difference to the city centre, especially midweek. Pubs and restaurants – many of which are genuinely fantastic and a credit to the city – would receive a huge boost knowing that there was a future where Preston can offer more than tribute acts. None of which is intended to overlook the work done at The Ferret, which remains the only place you can regularly watch original music being played, and other venues that put on a variety of events. You only have to look in our what’s on guide each week to see how much is happening. But it is not the same as having a substantial mass of people all coming together to experience one show.
Warnings about RAAC – found in the roof at Preston Guild Hall – began at a national level in 1996 but it was always expected that the material had a short shelf life. To be blunt, the Guild Hall’s roof was done on the cheap with lots of modifications along the way – as our reporting showed earlier this week.
It is reassuring to know that the aspiration is a brand new venue. With Animate, the now-buzzing Harris, plans to put a green space in the place of St John’s Shopping Centre – the centre of Preston could look very different indeed if a new Guild Hall was a crowning achievement.
And we should, as a city, aspire to that. But it doesn’t stray too far into pessimism to ask how likely the council is to secure funding for a new venue when Blackpool is loudly – and notably with MP backing – doing exactly the same.
The looming abolition of Preston City Council, under local government reorganisation, means that any decision on the Guild Hall can’t realistically be made any later than a year from now.
How the issue of the Guild Hall is solved will, rightly or wrongly, go a long way to deciding how Preston City Council is remembered in years to come.
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