Councillor calls for action as Dorchester’s former library remains empty
A Dorset Councillor is pushing for stricter limits on how long council building can sit empty
A senior councillor has said it is ‘wrong’ that Dorchester’s former library building remains empty after more than a decade.
Deputy Dorset Council leader Cllr Richard Biggs said the building, at the entrance to County Hall off The Grove in Dorchester, was last used by the library service a dozen years ago.
He has asked for a policy change to be considered to free up empty council buildings quicker.
“We have a number of properties which have been empty too long and I would like to see a system put in place where any directorate cannot hold them (empty buildings) for perhaps more than two years, particularly if there is a potential for housing use,” he said.
“The library moved in 2013 and we have still not got a use for it and that is wrong. I know things have failed to get funding but we cannot be in this situation year on year,” said Cllr Biggs.
Although he did not mention it to council colleagues underneath the building is the council’s nuclear bunker with the building once the base for an emergency planning team. It has also been used, for a short while, for social services staff.
Place and resources scrutiny committee chair Cllr Noc Lacey-Clarke (Con, Blandford) was critical that a list of council properties a previous meeting had asked for had still not been made available to the place and resources scrutiny committee.
He said there was also confusion about the figure of 650 council buildings which were said to not be part of the council’s ‘operational estate’.
In total the council owns more than 1,500 ‘assets’ which could include buildings, or parcels of land, around fifty of which are currently without any use.
The council has eleven properties on its immediate disposal list with a combined value of £11million – included among them the former East Dorset District Council offices at Furzehill, Wimborne where a planning request for housing is expected towards the end of the year.
Executive Director for Place, Jan Britton, told the committee that there had been a tendency by the council, and previous councils, to hold onto empty buildings in case they found a use for them in the future.