Extra £150k needed to repair Bristol Museum

Bristol City Council was forced to fork out £150,000 more than expected on repairs to Bristol Museum and Art Gallery after costs spiralled.

Councillors said lessons must be learned over the additional taxpayer money required to pay for work to upgrade the roof, boiler, windows and electrics, as well as damp-proofing the fine art store at the Grade II*-listed building.

Former mayor Marvin Rees’s cabinet approved spending more than £750,000 for the three-year project in April 2022, comprising grants of almost £680,000 from Arts Council England and £75,000 from Bristol Museums Development Trust.

But the lowest price offered by contractors far exceeded this and meant much more cash was needed for the repairs to meet the shortfall.

The total cost meant a decision would normally have to go to the strategy and resources policy committee for a decision in public by councillors.

However, a report to the meeting on Monday, September 16, said the deadline for the work to be completed was March 2025 and that this would have been missed, meaning the council would lose the Arts Council funding and that this would jeopardise a subsequent bid for £1.8million.

The damp-proofing work also had a tight timescale and needed to take place during five weeks when the artworks were moved to the stores.

So executive director for growth and regeneration John Smith took an urgent officer decision in August to allocate the extra £150,000 required from a health and safety budget and the committee was informed.

Bristol City Council head of collections and archives Linda Coode told the meeting that the higher than expected tender figures were because of dramatic price rises since the pandemic.

She said the repairs were a high priority and that a condition survey in 2021 revealed that overall £8million of investment was needed.

Cllr Abdul Malik (Green, Ashley) said: “I’m getting a bit worried about the increase in project costs.

“For future capital projects we need to learn and put some things in place.

“I really want to know what measures are in place to prevent further overruns.

“How will this impact future funding applications to the Arts Council?

Ms Coode replied: “We have a team of officers from the museum and corporate landlord who are now monitoring the whole project.

“We immediately appointed contractors. They are now on site and the project has started, so we are looking to have completed that project before the deadline.

“We are monitoring the progress and as part of that monitoring we are reviewing the costs involved.”

She said another application had been submitted for Arts Council money for more repairs and that because of what had happened with the price of the current works, processes had been put in place to monitor the budget from the start.

Mr Smith said: “For our future applications we are going to make sure they’re set up in a way that if we do get bids that come back with increased costs, which is still a potential, that the bids are structured in such a way that the council doesn’t have to bear the risks of those additional costs.”

Cllr Tim Rippington (Labour, Brislington East) said: “It’s easy to forget the impact that covid had on local councils in terms of the increased costs, and this isn’t the only project where we’ve suffered as a result of that.

“Councils are still in a really precarious position as a result of having to bear massive costs that we didn’t get the recompense for from national government.

“But our museums and art galleries are very important to us and getting that next round of funding will be crucial to maintaining our buildings, so this is an important thing that we do, accepting all the caveats about the fact it’s not a great place to be in.”

Cllr Ani Stafford-Townsend (Green, Central) said: “We have to protect our museums, we have to make sure they’re safe for people to visit and also for the artworks within them.

“They are really important assets so it’s crucial that we do spend that money to protect our cultural heritage.”

Cllr John Goluandris (Conservative, Stoke Bishop) said: “Where we are is not ideal, it’s not great.

“However, we were between a rock and a hard place so I don’t think we had any other choice but to do what we did.”