Delayed, over budget and no end in sight
Kettering’s cultural regeneration project is hugely delayed, reduced in scope and bosses have no idea when it will open.
By Sarah Ward
The cost of the extension to Kettering’s art gallery has cost double the original budget and no-one knows when it will open.
NN Journal can exclusively reveal the cost of the Cornerstone gallery extension has doubled, with North Northamptonshire Council, which is in charge of the project, confirming that rather than the £1.7m originally allocated for the new build extension, it has paid the Derby-based building contractor GF Tomlinson £3.628m with the majority of the cost being for the extension. Along the way there have been issues with blocked drainage, leaks into the new building, problems with the lift and not enough fire breaks added.
The budget had been £4.5m, with £1m set aside for works to the nearby Manor House Museum and £1m for the neighbouring library roof and internal works, but these have been swallowed up by the over budget extension.
The authority has admitted that lessons have been learned as to how it will handle any future projects, but now because the connected library’s roof is leaking and needs an entire refit, it is not known when the gallery will open.
The council has not allocated any further funds to the project and is hoping for a National Lottery heritage grant to pay for the museum works - but that could be years down the line.
The Labour opposition on the council are very critical of how the project has been handled over the past two years since the unitary began. Currently only the library remains open, with the treasures, artefacts and paintings from the gallery and museum hidden from view.
Cllr Anne Lee said:
“The current outcome is a poor outcome for Kettering residents.
“The art gallery has been closed as a gallery and community space for a considerable time now. There are currently no toilets in the library, since the toilets are in the art gallery. That has an impact on equality for the users of the library.
“Before the project, we had an art gallery, a museum and a library with a toilet. Now we have a library without a toilet.
“So I don’t just want to hear how lessons have been learned for next time, but how this project will be put right and when the art gallery and the museum will be reopened because Kettering residents need their Heritage quarter to be reopened for the economic and cultural welfare of the town.”
History of the project
The idea about regenerating the town’s cultural quarter of the library, Manor House Museum and Alfred East Art Gallery began back in the late 2010s when the borough council was still in existence.
Along with spending money along the high street, the renovation, then called the GLaM project (standing for gallery, library and museum) was intended to refurbish the town’s foremost cultural buildings and attract more people to the area, which has seen much decline in recent years due to a loss of major names on the nearby high street.
During the early months of Covid in 2020 the borough council announced it had received £3m from the government’s Getting Building Fund which it said would pay for the majority of the renovation costs, with the council putting in an additional £440,000 and the former county council committing £300k to roof repairs.
A report to the council’s executive, then led by Russell Roberts, with current NNC cabinet member Scott Edwards in charge, said the requirements of the grant meant the authority had to move fast and would need a planning application to be approved by December of that year:
“Due to the tight timescales it is vital that the project progresses swiftly. Therefore, the Council has secured the relevant external specialists to form a technical project team who will work with the Council through to the construction phase.”
It also said the expectation was that capital works were finished by January 2022 - the opening is now 18 months beyond that.
When the borough council was closed down in April 2021 to make way for the new unitary council, the project was handed over to the new authority to manage, along with some independent consultants it hired to run the scheme. An additional amount of money was added by NNC taking the total budget to £4.5m
However there have been few public reports and the renaming of the former GlaM project to Cornerstone proved controversial, with claims it had no local relevance and was too generic.
The authority did not involve the local friends of groups or the wider town in the renaming and Market Deeping based company Productive Designs, which has been involved with the Chester House rebrand, was appointed by the council to decide the name.
The latest
The delay was on the council’s agenda twice last week, but to the fury of Kettering councillors it was not discussed at the full council on Thursday as the authority ran out of time to hear Cllr Lee’s motion, which wanted the council to vote on agreeing to commit to reopen the complex by next summer.
However leader Cllr Smithers, called time on the meeting.
Cllr Lee said the meeting “brought into sharp focus the shameful lack of voice Kettering has at the table.
“With the decision of leader Jason Smithers to guillotine the meeting at 9pm, none of the motions were debated. Despite warm words from the leading group’s councillors at select committees and scrutiny panels, when push comes to shove, the Conservatives have been found wanting.
“They could have stepped up. They could have either abstained or voted against the motion to end the meeting and ensure that a vital debate surrounding the reopening of our Art Gallery and Museum could take place.
“They could have forced the executive to give our residents a date for these facilities to reopen, when we will no longer be the forgotten corner of North Northamptonshire. Instead of the statutory minimum, we want to have the proper facilities that our town deserves. Facilities that other corners of the region have in abundance.”
The gallery had been discussed at a scrutiny panel meeting earlier in the week but those who attended had complaints about the lack of information provided. There was also annoyance that the executive member in charge of leisure and culture Helen Howell did not attend to answer questions.
Rather than a written report there was a slide presentation of 12 pages, with many questions left unanswered.
Cllr Mark Pengelly, who was on the committee, told NNJ after the meeting he thinks a ‘full investigation’ is needed into what has happened with the project. He said not enough detail has been provided about why the project is so behind and why it has overspent.
The report did shed some light on some issues, indicating what may have gone wrong.
A section called ‘lessons learned’ included; procuring independent advice on project structure and programme management at the outset of a capital project where internal expertise is not available; robust scrutiny of time, daily rates and markups required of all potential contractors and when appointing a contractor under a framework that it ensures that references are taken.
It now appears that a decision will need to be taken on replacing the library roof before anything further happens.
The council has commissioned a tent to put over the building, but it is uncertain as to when this may be erected. NNJ understands the lead time to order the Collyweston slate for the grade II listed library is also many months.
Independent councillor and former leader of Kettering Borough Council Jim Hakewill said:
“I think the project has been poorly handled from the start. When public money is being spent we should be scrutinising it, but this has not happened until now.”
The authority said:
“Council officers are working with the National Lottery Heritage Fund regarding potential funding for a significant new capital and revenue project. At this point, there is no set timeline for this work.”
A note that Thursday’s story will be later than the usual 7.10am, as it’s being held back to report from the police, fire and crime commissioner’s appearance before the panel to answer questions about his controversial appointment of a close friend to the chief fire officer.
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Unfortunate features of the Scrutiny Committee session are, that it was chaired by the wife of a member of the NNC "Executive Committee" (properly, the council Cabinet), that while it was theoretically broadcast live on Youtube, in fact the sound was turned off throughout the broadcast, and that broadcast has now been expunged from the NNC Youtube archive. It was, in addition, extremely foolish - there is no other description that can be used - of Cllr Howell not to show up for the meeting. Scrutiny, in the reasonably understood meaning of the word, has therefore, quite simply, not happened.
Cllr Pengelly is quite right. There does need to be a full investigation of the Cornerstone project. Indeed, I would go further. The investigation needs to be fully independent of the council and should be sponsored by the Secretary of State.
Where is Kettering's MP, Mr Hollobone, and why is he silent on all this?
I’ve been suggesting for years that KBC, and now NNC, employ an in-house architect to assist in procuring building projects, designing those new build and refurbishment projects and administering the building contract. The catalogue of mismanagement is less likely to have happened since that is what architects (7 years minimum training to above masters degree level) are professionally qualified to do. GSS were brought in far too late to sort out a problem purely of conservative councillors making. In the past the use by KBC/NNC of ‘outside consultants’ has been shorthand for city-based, non-local companies not familiar with the area and/or not correctly professionally qualified. Estate agents to redesign the town centre for example! My offer remains open as unlike most councillors I was born here and do have the areas best interests at heart.