Harrogate Borough Council has confirmed that the contractor has handed over its new Civic Centre at Knapping Mount in Harrogate – marking an exciting new era for the local authority.
The new energy efficient offices, which have been designed by Yorkshire based architects Farrell and Clark, will see council services operating from a single site rather than five separate locations.
The new civic centre will allow the council to offer better customer service by operating from a single site and maximise staff efficiency by reducing duplication, sharing resources and streamlining processes.
See our 360 image of the Civic Centre (click to drag the image)
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Work on the construction of the new offices began in October 2015, with Yorkshire based Harry Fairclough Construction acting as the main contractor for the project. The building which is largely complete is due to open early December after final fit out is completed by the council.
Councillor Richard Cooper, Leader of Harrogate Borough Council said:
For decades, the council has been operating from five buildings within Harrogate town centre, which incurs five sets of business rates, utility bills and operational costs. In short, the council was operating at a much higher cost than it needed to.
Moving to the new offices will see annual efficiency savings of around £1 million and put us in a good position to achieve further savings too.
Our new purpose built offices will streamline how we operate with council services operating out of one building and will further improve on the high standards of customer service we provide for our customers.
The people who live in our community have been at the heart of the decision to build new offices. The significant annual savings which will be achieved by this move will ensure that we can maintain the front line services – the parks and gardens, sports centres, recycling, charity grants and much more – which are important to all of us who live in the district.
Cost savings in Local government??? hmmm so much waste in bad management, perhaps address that first!