PRESTON CITY COUNCIL: Challenge of reopening Guild Hall

It is impossible to estimate when Preston’s Guild Hall will be fully operational again – because the extent of the structural problems facing the venue is still unknown.

That was the sobering message from Preston City Council’s chief executive as he was quizzed over the future of the landmark attraction, which has lain largely unused for more than five years.

Adrian Phillips told a meeting of the town hall’s overview and scrutiny committee that if the authority was “incredibly lucky”, a “low-cost solution” might be found to the suspected presence of defective concrete in part of the building’s roof.

However, he braced members for the prospect that any remedial work could result in a multi-million-pound bill which the council would be unable to cover on its own – and said preliminary discussions had already been held over the possibility of external funding.

Mr. Phillips was addressing the committee just days before Tuesday’s announcement of the autumn line-up for a new small event space – to be called the Guild Lounge – which is being established in a part of the building known to be free from the material dubbed ‘crumbling concrete’.
It was the fear that ‘reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC)’, as it is officially known, was likely to be present in the roof space above the Grand Hall and Charter Theatre auditoria that last year saw the closure of much of the facility indefinitely extended – just at the point it was poised to emerge from mothballs after being the subject of a four-year legal wrangle.

Last September, with plans in place before the year was out for the Guild Hall to stage its first show since May 2019, new safety advice was issued about RAAC – including an alert that it could collapse without warning when it reached the end of its 30-year lifespan.

The hall was constructed in the early 1970s – right in the middle of the two-decade period during which the material was most commonly used.  That timeline also meant that if RAAC was present, it would have long since ceased to be considered safe.

However, the scrutiny committee heard that, almost a year on, it had still not been confirmed for certain that the roofs did contain RAAC.
Adrian Phillips said specialist contractors needed to be able to access the potentially affected areas in order to carry out the “detailed work that’s required”.

That process had been delayed, he said, both by the need to remove asbestos from the parts of the building to be investigated – a process which has now been completed – and also by the availability of “suitably-qualified structural engineers” to undertake the necessary assessments. RAAC-affected schools and hospitals had been prioritised for their services over buildings like the Guild Hall, councillors heard.

Nevertheless, Mr. Phillips said the city council was “not deluding” itself over the fact that RAAC was highly likely to be found – nor about the scale of the challenge that would lie ahead in dealing with it.

He told the committee that the ideal solution would be “some structural intervention that would prevent any failure of the RAAC causing a public safety issue” – but which enabled it to be left “in situ”.

“That’s what we would like, but we haven’t got that [option] yet, because we’re relying on [the structural engineers’] detailed report.”
The town hall boss added:  “We can’t commit to a timescale, because we don’t have the information.”

Should the roof panels above the main, 2,000-capacity Grand Hall ultimately require removal, Mr Phillips said it was likely the “external cladding” would also have to go – and he warned committee members that “£1m [worth] of scaffolding is not unusual on major construction projects these days”.

“Our hope is that the Charter Theatre [which seats 780 people] will be far simpler to manage due to the nature of the structure of the roof there.  [But] the roof of the Grand Hall…is a very complex structure and…unless we are incredibly fortunate, we‘ll be looking for external funding to support work to [that],” Mr. Phillips explained.

Although he said there was “no point speculating [about the cost] beyond the fact it’s likely to be expensive”, he warned that if the total was to run into “several million pounds”, the authority would need support from the Arts Council, National Lottery and other outside bodies.
To that end, he told the committee that the city council had already had “exploratory discussions” with the Arts Council, a national organisation charged with promoting creativity and culture.

Committee chair Cllr John Potter said that if the 50-year-old Guild Hall had a lifespan of only another “20- to 30 years” – regardless of the RAAC situation – it would be a “far harder sell” to secure funding for its extensive renovation.

However, deputy city council leader Martyn Rawlinson said that timeframe was not too dissimilar to the period over which money could be borrowed against buildings – and added that it was “not beyond the realms of possibility” that finance for the Guild Hall would be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, acknowledging the huge interest of Preston residents in seeing the much-missed venue back in business, Mr. Phillips warned of a “complex process” ahead, but stressed:  “All the council can reasonably do, we are doing.”

It will be a challenge to tempt people to try out the new mini-venue within the Guild Hall, the deputy leader of Preston City Council has admitted.
Martyn Rawlinson told overview and scrutiny committee members that the Guild Lounge – which launches in October in the foyer area with a weekly programme of events through until next March – would immediately become the biggest arts and culture space in the city, with a 350-seat capacity.
However, he said that long-term closure of the Guild Hall – coupled with changes in leisure habits over recent years – meant the authority had put “conservative targets on…ticket sales”.

“When somewhere has been shut for a long time, it’s hard to get people back.  [As a pub and gig-goer], I can see how difficult it is these days to get people out of the house.

“Even the successful pubs and clubs in Preston…are struggling a little bit. Some nights are dead and other nights are really busy – it’s…patchy.
“This is not an easy thing that we are doing… [but] we’re putting everything in place to make [it] a success,” Cllr Rawlinson said. He added that he was “optimistic” that the venture would pay for itself and possibly even “produce a surplus”.

Committee member Cllr Lynne Brooks asked whether it might be possible for the public to hire out the Guild Lounge for private functions like wedding receptions.

Cllr Rawlinson said it was “a definite possibility”, but explained that the focus was on getting “all the pieces of the jigsaw in place” for the events programme first, before thinking about becoming “even more flexible with the space”.

He explained a “freelance programmer” had been recruited to book the acts for the Guild Lounge, while the authority’s culture team will be responsible for the sale of tickets.