Thank you to all of you who have supported us and signed our petition calling upon all Falkirk Councillors to honour their commitment to locate the new HQ and Civic Facilities within Falkirk’s traditional town centre.
Some of our team were interviewed by national and local press recently. The resulting news article and video interview can be viewed online here. There is no paywall to view. If you experience difficulty viewing the video please use an alternative browser and / or accept the Cookies.
Thousands of you have shown your support for Falkirk town centre already. But we need your help to send a strong and positive message to all prospective Councillors and to share your opinion about what people want to see done in Falkirk town centre.
Please ask your friends and family members to sign the petition and add their names alongside yours. Many people may simply not yet have had the opportunity to do so. Your voices and opinions are especially important now as the Falkirk area heads towards the local elections on 5 May.
Councillors from all parties and independents will soon be canvassing you for your vote. We are aware that some election candidates are making vague and generalised statements that they support the ‘refurbishment of Falkirk town centre’, but without having meaningful policies or plans that can back up these statements.
If prospective Councillors ask for your vote, please press them to confirm that they support the relocation of the new Council HQ and Civic Facilities into Falkirk’s traditional town centre. If they cannot give you a straight ‘yes’ in answer to this question please ask why not.
The alternative proposal that’s been promoted by some Councillors, envisages a new standalone office building on the former Westbank Clinic site and seeks to refurbish the current town hall. Council estimates indicate that such a scheme could cost anywhere between £30m and £40m yet it would still not address the fundamentally obsolete nature of the +50-year-old FTH building. This scheme would have much higher running costs than a combined High St / Cockburn St. It would also fail to provide an accessible Library and customer Hub, and offers little if any regeneration benefits.
There have been a number of incorrect assertions made by some local politicians about the HQ and Civic Facilities. We’ve listed some of these and provided evidential fact check information for you below. We hope these are useful.
The Falkirk Healthy High Street team have no allegiance to any political party. We are politically aware but non-partisan. We are merely commercially informed local business people who believe passionately in the importance of Falkirk’s traditional town centre. We are furious that some Councillors within Falkirk Council have voted to effectively abandon the town centre.
Thank you so much for supporting our campaign. We will be posting further updates here and saying more via the Falkirk Healthy High Street Facebook page. Please continue to help by sharing our posts and contributing to the debate or in whatever other way you can. We really appreciate it.
Best Wishes from the Falkirk Healthy High Street team
Fact Check: Things That Have Been Said About the Combined HQ and Arts Centre Proposal
1. “It’s unaffordable to progress with the High Street / Cockburn Street project”
This is incorrect. The £45m of capital investment to deliver the combined HQ and Civic Facilities has been in the Council’s agreed 5-year Capital budget as a prudent and affordable expenditure since 27 February 2019. Taking into account UK and Scottish Government grants and significantly improved operational efficiency, the Council’s own figures demonstrate that it would be cheaper in overall terms to construct and operate the combined building in the traditional town centre than to build a new separate office on Westbank and build a new separate town hall, or attempt to refurbish the functionally obsolete FTH town hall.
The Council’s projections (29 Sept 2021) at p.11 para 4.33 indicate that the new combined facility on High Street / Cockburn Street could save taxpayers at least £116,000 in annual operational costs compared to separate HQ and Civic facilities. Much has changed since the Council’s £45m budget was set in February 2019. However, combined pressures of inflation and energy price rises make the case for new combined facilities even more compelling now than they were in both 2019 and 2021.
In Sept 2021, in addition to considering the combined office and civic facilities at High Street / Cockburn Street, opposition Councillors had also been contemplating separate HQ offices on the Westbank site and the potential of locating a new town hall at High St / Cockburn St. This option was assessed at a capital cost of £58.8m and was rejected.
The Council’s estimates (including earlier Council comparisons in 25 October 2019) indicate that capital investment of £45m equates to an annual commitment of £1.7m for the Council. This annual commitment is only 0.4% of Falkirk Council’s current annual budget of £390m.
The Council’s published estimates (08 December 2021) for a new office building alone on the former Westbank Clinic site indicate that it would cost in excess of £25m. In addition to this, a minimum of around £4.5m (circa £3m at 2018 prices) of essential maintenance work is required to FTH - plus an as yet unquantified but likely to be significant amount of capital investment to provide FTH with new M&E systems and to address shortcomings in the energy efficiency of the +50-year-old FTH building. There is no guarantee that the £6m in UK Gov grant funding that has been offered for the High Street/ Cockburn St scheme would be available to spend on the existing FTH building.
Even after constructing new HQ offices at Westbank and attempting to refurbish the existing town hall at a combined capital cost of between £35 - £40m, this would still leave FTH in a functionally obsolete state, without the necessary auxiliary spaces and modernisation required to make it viable. This scheme would also fail to provide a solution to the Council's requirement to provide a new customer Hub. In addition to being more expensive to run than the combined High Street / Cockburn Street building, it would also fail to provide a more modern and accessible library such as that proposed in the High St / Cockburn St scheme.
2. “The town will refurbish itself…it always has done”
This is incorrect and dangerously misinformed. The town centre has been hit hard by changes in shopping patterns a situation that has been exacerbated by the pandemic and the lack of investment by Falkirk Council. Falkirk continues to have a larger number of successful independent retailers than many other towns, but independents alone cannot sustain the town centre as a place to shop and visit. Three high-quality independent outlets have closed in the last few weeks alone. Prospective developers and investors have started to turn their backs on Falkirk town centre following Falkirk Council’s decision in September 2021 not to proceed with a town centre HQ.
More recent Council decisions to cancel the popular Free After 3 parking initiative (against the wishes of local businesses and members of the public) and to close public conveniences create further disincentives for people to visit the traditional town centre.
We urgently need Falkirk Council to realise that thousands of people from across the district work in Falkirk’s traditional town centre and that jobs are at risk.
Time is of the essence. Without urgent placemaking investments from the Council such as the new Council HQ to give confidence to other investors, the future of Falkirk town centre looks increasingly bleak.
3. “It’ll be a white elephant…similar places like Perth Theatre are a drain on taxpayers”
This is incorrect. In the study conducted on behalf of Falkirk Council in 2021 of users of the current FTH and library facilities, 86% of people surveyed said that they would definitely make use of a new facility if based in Falkirk’s traditional town centre. The Council’s report to the meeting held on 29 September 2021 provides more information on the survey (see page 8 at section 4.20 – 4.23) and on the High St / Cockburn St project.
Perth Theatre and Concert Hall is operated by an ‘arms-length’ registered charity called Horsecross Arts Limited. Perth Council contributes less than one-third of the venue’s income. The venue has broken even financially in most years, and even returned a small operating profit in some years. Further information can be found on the Horsecross Arts charity’s listing on the Scottish Charities Register. Detailed accounts for Horsecross Arts can be found in their Companies House listing.
Perth’s example demonstrates that town centre civic and arts facilities like the one we want to see in Falkirk are capable of being successful. The Perth facility successfully brings in sponsorship money from local and regional businesses and is a thriving and animated part of Perth town centre and the local community. As with other culture and hospitality businesses, the pandemic has had an adverse effect on Perth Theatre / Concert Hall but it has survived. It is not a drain on taxpayers. It is once again helping to provide a major fulcrum around which culture and commerce successfully combine in Perth.
Both the UK Government and Scottish Government want Falkirk Council to build the new HQ and Civic Facilities in the traditional town centre, and have contributed significant grant funding towards the project. In December 2021, UK Government Minister Iain Stewart described the project (in particular the Arts Centre component) as:
“a transformational project which will create a vibrant new fulcrum for the region’s cultural sector, whilst igniting the renewal of Falkirk’s town centre”
You can watch and listen to Iain Stewart’s statement in the Falkirk Area Growth Deal launch here. Iain’s section starts at 10.00 minutes from the start and his specific comments are made at 13.03 minutes from the start.
In direct contrast to Iain Stewart’s comments, local Conservative Councillors in Falkirk have during 2021, voted firmly against a project that the UK Government has offered to commit millions of pounds towards. To date, other than having made vague statements about ‘refurbishing the town centre’ Falkirk Conservative Group Councillors have refused all requests to confirm they will support the High Street/Cockburn Street project.
4. "There’s not enough car parking for a new HQ and Civic Facilities on the High Street".
This is incorrect. Falkirk Council’s own reports and the detailed assessment by internationally recognised transport consultancy WSP submitted to Falkirk Councillors in September 2021 concluded that staff and visitor car parking can be accommodated across existing town-centre car parks and that the town centre location offers an abundance of alternative travel modes.
The WSP report additionally explained that locating the HQ and Civic Facilities within the traditional town centre would help Falkirk Council to comply with its own transportation policies, and those of both UK Government and Scottish Government.
Parking for people with additional mobility requirements was identified in the preliminary concept drawings for the combined HQ and Civic Facilities at High Street / Cockburn Street. More detailed design and development work would have been able to (and could still) develop and refine the amount of specialist parking to be delivered at the venue in compliance with statutory requirements.
ENDS