Taxpayers' bill of £39k for marketing fire HQ
Tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' cash has been spent on a property company to market a £10 million fire control centre in Wolverhampton that was abandoned before it was even finished.
The costs come on top of those for building the centre at Wolverhampton Business Park despite it never being used and its £48 million rental bill over a 25-year-lease, if a buyer is never found.
Taxpayers also continue to pay for its round-the-clock security and electricity.
The Government's Department for Communities and Local Government has now spent just under £39,000 to date with GVA to market the building, along with four similar centres which have not yet been sold or rented.
GVA's advert highlights that the large control rooms, which were originally designed for fire services, could serve as 'call/control centres or dedicated emergency response spaces'.
Baroness Hanham, a minister in the department, has previously said it was 'clearly unsatisfactory that taxpayers have had to foot the bill for this poorly conceived and poorly implemented project from the last Administration'.
Stephen Osborne-Brown, spokesman for GVA, said today: "The buildings are potentially suitable for a wide variety of alternative uses and we have attempted to ensure that all uses are adequately targeted in the marketing campaign.
"Interest in the Wolverhampton building has emerged for a variety of different uses including security, utilities, data centre and emergency services, where terms remain under discussion. I am unable to disclose the identity of any of the organisations making enquiries."
Ex-deputy prime minister John Prescott was behind the plans to replace 46 fire control rooms with nine regional centres, including that at the business park just off junction two of the M54.
Costs however soared from £120m to £635m – meaning the move could no longer go ahead.
The Wolverhampton building was meant to bring the control rooms of West Midlands, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Hereford and Worcester fire services under one roof. None of them however wanted to move there.
Four out of the nine centres nationally have either been sold or rented but GVA have been brought in to market the remaining five, including Wolverhampton, Cambridge, Taunton, Wakefield and Castle Donington.
The Government has been allowed to market the building as the company which owns them, Control Centre General Partner Limited, went into receivership. Previously terms of the lease restricted the use of the buildings to government departments.
