Uppermill Civic Hall Extension Now Finished

The new extension.

Building work on the new extension to Uppermill Civic Hall has been completed. The Clerk of Saddleworth Parish Council, Tony Marlor, revealed during Monday night’s council meeting that the work had finished “as of this morning.”

However, the Civic Hall car park is going to remain out of action until sometime later in the year, because it needs resurfacing. When it comes back into service, councillors have already agreed that it will join other village car parks in having a limit on the length of time vehicles can be left there.

The old single-storey rear extension has been replaced by a two-storey structure with better access for disabled people, new toilets on the first floor, and improved kitchen facilities. A new chamber for Parish Council meetings, which was used for Monday night’s meeting, will double up as the venue for wedding ceremonies.

There are still some “snagging” issues to be resolved with the new extension. Some councillors raised concerns during the meeting over the state of the new access ramp, which apparently didn’t stand up very well to equipment from the Oldham (Lees) Band at Saturday’s concert.

Councillors were told the ramp, which was intended to allow better access for heavy equipment as well as for the disabled, will now be looked at again.

The Parish Council has borrowed £500,000 from a government-funded board to cover the cost of the work. It will now repay that over 25 years in annual instalments of £31,856.56, making the total cost just under £800,000.

The council had already budgeted for £25,000 a year to cover repayments on the loan taken out when the first phase of renovation took place more than a decade ago. That loan has now been paid off so the council only needs to find an extra £7,000 or so every year to cover the higher cost of the new repayments. It hopes to do that through some small savings on staff, and increased bookings of the hall.

Senior Liberal Democrat Cllr Brian Lord recently acknowledged that it would have been better had the Parish Council gone ahead with the work all in one go. He said the cost of the second phase work had more than doubled over the past decade, from an original estimate of £200,000, adding that it was a “big mistake” in hindsight to decide to leave it until now.

You can read more about that in a Saddleworth News article here. Monday night’s meeting was dominated by a lengthy discussion about parking in Uppermill, and a report about that is here.

Author: Jude Gidney - Editor

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