Durham County Hall demolition 'will cost £5m'

County Hall is to be replaced by a business park with shops, restaurants, gyms and offices

The cost of demolishing a council's headquarters is estimated to be £5m, it has been revealed.

Durham County Council's current site at County Hall in Aykley Heads is due to be bulldozed to make way for a 4,000-job business park.

Removing asbestos will account for much of the projected cost, councillors have been told.

Work on the authority's £50m new base on the site of the former Sands car park in Durham began in 2019.

Demolition of County Hall is set to get under way in summer next year.

Half-a-million pounds has been allocated in the next financial year for preparatory work, but a meeting of the council's cabinet was told the full cost of the scheme would be much higher.

'Five times the size'

"It's about 14 years since the cost of asbestos removal from County Hall was estimated to be £500,000 a floor," said Independent opposition councillor John Shuttleworth.

"The former highways lab [also previously on the Aykley Heads site] cost £1.4m to demolish and that was after the asbestos was removed. County Hall is five times the size."

According to a report for the committee, "salvageable material" from the building, such as aluminium window frames and parquet floors, could offset some of the costs.

However, that idea was dismissed by Mr Shuttleworth who warned proximity to asbestos could render much of it worthless, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Responding, deputy council leader Alan Napier, of Labour, said demolition compared favourably with attempting to refurbish the site, which had estimated costs of £76.5m.

"But crucially, [this] would also have inhibited the ability to open up the site as a strategic employment site, with all the benefits," he added.

"The total estimated budget provision required for the demolition of County Hall, including the removal of asbestos, is circa £5m."