Council to consider an extra £83,000 being spent on fitting out the fourth floor of Corby Cube

Councillors will consider a request for an additional £83,000 to be spent on fitting out the fourth floor of the Corby Cube.
The Corby CubeThe Corby Cube
The Corby Cube

Members of Corby Council’s One Corby Policy Committee will disucss the request at its meeting taking place tonight (Tuesday).

Originally it had been envisaged that the fourth floor would be used as a restaurant, but the council took a decision last year for the space to be used for other purposes.

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Since that time the council has invested money in completing the fabric of the space on the fourth floor.

It has been marketed by the council, but the response from potential tenants has indicated a preference for the space to be fully fitted out for an end office use.

In addition, tonight’s report is suggesting that there may be other improvements within the Cube which could increase the space available for offices and increase efficiency.

The council had previously agreed £600,000 towards completion of works on the fourth floor.

Of this, £127,000 remains unspent.

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The report requests an additional £83,000 be provided to complete the additional works and the additional money would be taken from reserves.

This would be treated as an “invest to save” scheme, with the money being recouped through rental of the office space and would provide an additional income to the council in future years.

But ahead of tonight’s meeting, leader of the Conservative opposition on the council Rob McKellar said: “I am frankly appalled that the Labour controlled council is asking Corby taxpayers to stump up yet more cash on a project that is already tens of millions of pounds overspent.

“When the council asked for a further £5 million in 2011 we were assured this would be the last request for money.

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“When they came back for another £600,000 last year we were again told that this was the last.

“When is it going to stop?”

He added: “Local people were promised a fourth floor restaurant, yet the council has also reneged upon this.

“In a year when the council is proposing to put up council tax by 1.9 per cent and cut Corby’s police community support officer budget by £50,000, yet another overspend on the Cube budget is extremely unwelcome news.”

The report will be considered in private at tonight’s meeting due to commercially sensitive information.

However, a redacted version of the report can be found on the council’s website at www.corby.gov.uk.

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