The cost of the saga surrounding Forfar’s former Lochside leisure centre has broken the million-pound barrier.
Nothing remains of the building after demolition crews moved in on the Forfar Loch Country Park site last October.
The project got underway almost six years after the 47-year-old centre closed – and after a fight to save it reached Scotland’s highest civil court.
FOI data
Demolition is costing Angus Council £650,000.
And we can reveal the combined costs of maintaining the building since it shut as well legal fees for the Court of Session fight have taken the final bill to seven figures.
Figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request include a £60,000-plus expenses payout following the authority’s bruising defeat in the landmark judicial review case.
Lochside has also cost the council nearly £1,000 every week since it closed in rates, repairs and maintenance.
It all adds up to a total figure of £1,022,015
And that is something the authority can ill afford as it faces a £52 million budget shortfall in the next three years.
Cost breakdown
Demolition
Estimates rose £150,000 to £650k after councillors finally agreed to raze Lochside in late 2021.
Site clearance is almost complete and some work is already underway to put in paths.
The ground will be landscaped by the spring and returned to open space in the country park.
Court costs
Forfar businessmen Mark Guild and Donald Stewart took the authority to court over the planned demolition.
They said the building – replaced by Forfar community campus in 2017 – should be kept for community use.
In August 2020, the Inner House of Scotland’s Court of Session ruled the council had been wrong to approve Lochside’s demolition without carrying out a proper public consultation.
Councillors decided against challenging the decision in the UK Supreme Court.
But defending the court action, including hiring a QC, cost the authority almost £115,000.
FOI figures show it was made up of:
- Council legal fees £13,268
- Counsel fees £38,563
- Award of expenses £62,000
Keeping the boarded-up building standing
From the day the lock turned on Lochside the empty building has cost Angus taxpayers more than £1/4m.
Almost £200k of that is in rates.
Utility charges totalled £41,005 to November 2022 when the heavy machinery moved in to begin the task of taking it down.
And it has cost £17,500 since 2017 to secure and maintain a building which has been regularly targeted by vandals.
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