Labour wants to drill down into financial viability of Bromley council’s office switch

By Joe Coughlan, Local Democracy Service

Bromley councillors have cited concerns on the financial viability of the authority’s new offices after claiming ‘poor metrics’ had been used when deciding to rent out the space.

Seven of the borough’s Labour councillors have called in the decision for further scrutiny this week.

The building, Churchill Court, was purchased by the authority in July 2023 and includes four distinct blocks. The development will be the new home of Bromley council’s offices, with remaining portions of the structure being rented out to be used as office space.

Labour councillors claimed that ‘poor metrics’ had been used to calculate the financial viability of letting out one of the blocks of the building and that the up-front costs for letting would be much higher than initially predicted.

They claimed the estimation of the financial yield had been done without including the price paid for the asset, and felt this could have been done to artificially increase the appeal of the proposal.

Council documents stated another reason for the call-in was the lack of a full cost comparison on the viability of moving Bromley Central Library to Churchill Court instead of the former Top Shop unit on Bromley High Street.

The cost of moving the library to the old retail unit has been costed at £15 million, which the Labour councillors felt could have been minimised by moving the service to the new council offices instead.

Councillors said they felt the project would fail to provide a profit to the council until far beyond the six years initially indicated by officers. They also claimed the sale of the council’s current headquarters, which includes the historic Bromley Palace, was sold for £3m less than initially budgeted.

The sale of the current offices was confirmed by the authority in July this year by the council accepting an unconditional offer on the freehold of the Stockwell Close site.

While the figure currently remains confidential, Labour councillor Alisa Igoe criticised the ‘rushed’ proceedings of the transaction and labelled it a ‘fire sale’.

Conservative councillor Colin Smith, leader of the council, defended the authority’s decision by claiming the deal would provide huge financial savings to the council on top of the sale price. Council officers added that the authority could lose up to £2.2m a year in running costs if the freehold for the site was retained.

Council documents from last month claimed refurbishment works for portions of Churchill Court were nearly complete and the authority would be moving to the building on a phased basis from October until the end of the year.

The plan to rent out portions of Stockwell Court as office space will be discussed at the scrutiny committee meeting on Thursday.

Pictured top: Churchill Court, the site of Bromley council’s new headquarters (Picture: Joe Coughlan)