Closure of council HQ makes me 'sick as a pig'

John Crowe is the son of the Shirehall architect, Ralph Crowe

The closure of a council headquarters after nearly 60 years has left the son of its architect feeling "as sick as a pig".

Shropshire Council has decided to move out of the Shirehall in Shrewsbury to save money and said it was "no longer fit for purpose".

It has asked staff to work from home from Monday, ahead of a temporary move to smaller offices in the town's Guildhall.

John Crowe, the son of Ralph Crowe, led a campaign to keep the Shirehall open and said the move could have been avoided if the building had been maintained better.

The council needs to find £62.5m of savings this financial year to close a funding gap and said the necessary refurbishment of the Shirehall would cost in excess of £30m.

It said in the last year alone, energy bills at Shirehall totalled almost £500,000.

The authority had planned to move out of the building at the end of the year.

It aims eventually to move into offices in a development on the site of the former Riverside shopping centre in Shrewsbury, although no budget has yet been established for a new headquarters.

It decided to bring the move out of Shirehall forward and close the building to the majority of the staff from Friday to save on winter fuel costs and maintenance.

Mr Crowe said the move out was "understandable given the plight of Shropshire Council's present finances," but was also "unnecessary if Shropshire Council had taken better care of our Shirehall in recent times".

Ralph Crowe was the architect of the council headquarters

Mr Crowe described the Shirehall as a "civic centre for the whole of the county," although he accepted not everyone liked its design.

"Modernism is Marmite for some," he said.

He explained it became necessary to build the offices in the 1960s because of the time it was taking staff to travel between various offices in Shrewsbury.

Mr Crowe said: "They saw that it was necessary coming out of the dark days of the 50s and the austerity after the Second World War to build with a modern, light, open, attractive, feature for the future."

He said its design, with its round council chamber prominent at the front "spoke to the people of Shropshire and their future".

Asked what was next for his campaign, he said had not given up on the authority returning to the Shirehall and claimed "that prospect is still very possible".

He said the Guildhall was "very awkward for the working of a major county council".