Inverness councillor highly critical of town house plan
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Related article: Highland Council to leave Inverness Town House after 140 years to save £370,000
Related article: Council looks to ditch Inverness Town House as a city base to save £370,000
A Highland councillor has criticised plans to leave Inverness Town House.
In December Highland Council formally agreed to permanently move out of the building after 140 years.
The departure is scheduled for April when 100 staff members will move to the council headquarters.
Councillor Duncan Macpherson (Inverness South, independent) was this week highly critical of the plan on social media and claimed it had not been properly thought through.
Posting on his Facebook page he made the claim and added: "The £370,000 saving to Highland Council could result in a direct loss of the same £370,000 to the Inverness Common Good Fund – the trustees of which are all of the 74 Highland councillors."
He wondered who would rent the vacant city centre offices – because they would be competing with the many other existing vacant premises currently on offer to potential customers.
Cllr Macpherson said: "The Inverness Town House doesn’t have full disabled access to all areas of the building and this is essential for risk assessment, in order to evacuate disabled persons safely in the event of a fire alarm sounding or for a genuine emergency.
"The single lift inside the town house only goes to the first floor of the front civic part of the building, every other part of the building involves access by steep staircases.
"To add a new lift to the rear offices would involve a total realignment of the building and the cost would conservatively run to around £1 million for the listed building.
"The new office users would have no parking, as the town house car park is set to disappear as part of the Inverness Castle developments."
Cllr Macpherson doubted that any prospective new tenants would be happy to have to share all the building’s utilities costs and added: "There are no separate electricity meters on any floors, or separate fire safety or sprinkler systems. All heating has to be on all the time from the Service Point office and above.
"There are much better modern office facilities currently available in business park locations around the city, complete with free parking, boardroom facilities, lifts to all floors and full reception and telephony services.
"In conclusion – the best tenants for the recently refurbished Inverness Town House, at a cost of £7m plus, are the Highland Council – that’s right, the existing occupants!"
A Highland Council spokeswoman said: “The council continues to recognise the importance of its role as custodian for the Inverness Common Good Fund.
"Reports will be taken to future meetings of the City of Inverness Area committee that take into account the implications of the council vacating the town house and consider the future opportunities for use of this important historical building for inverness.”
