Town Hall preservation failure not all down to council

Oldham Town Centre Partnership

THE failure to preserve Oldham’s historic town hall has not all been down to the council.

Labour councillor Dave Hibbert was commenting on the latest plans to bring the Grade II listed building back into use.

He said: “A lot of people have got a great emotional attachment to it and it’s an iconic building in the town centre. We have got to recognise over the years that there’s been a lot of frustrated aspirations for the Town Hall but a lot of the failures have not been down to the council, whatever the administration.”

He gave examples, such as plans fizzling out because the credit crunch affected firms involved, adding: “We have got to be careful we don’t set ourselves unrealistic or unachievable targets that prevent us from doing anything to the building. We have to recognise there will be limits of what we can do.”

Regeneration officer John Studholme said circumstances should soon pick up to enable them to get a developer on board.

Giving the latest update, he said Oldham Council had funded £700,000 for work to make the building watertight and help it dry out over the next 12 months

He added: “The overall aim is to stabilise the building and make it an attractive proposition to potential developers and then market it.”

But he warned that if there was a delay in attracting an investor more work might have to be done.