Plans will be drawn up for Portsmouth City Council to move out of 'vastly inefficient' Civic Offices

Speaking at Tuesday’s (March 7) cabinet meeting, Councillor Steve Pitt said the project combined with the major City Centre North scheme would provide a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to influence the future of the city centre.

Work to consider the future of the building follows a council motion last year which said it was both too costly and too underused to be suitable with an alternative smaller base to be found elsewhere.

Council reports show the building was operating at below half capacity even before the pandemic but changes to working practices brought about by Covid had seen this drop to 16 per cent of its 2,500-desk capacity being used.

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A building survey found that remaining at the Civic Offices would cost the council £130m over the next 30 years while a full refurbishment would add £75m to this. A full relocation would cost an estimated £36m on top of the cost of purchasing land.

Cllr Pitt said there had been ‘positive discussions’ so far with the aim of delivering better value for money.

‘There’s no more central focus for that than there is around the Civic Offices,’ he said. ‘It’s a hugely inefficient building, costing a vast amount of money to the public purse to operate and like all organisations there’s a need to review how we deliver those services and where we deliver them from post-Covid.

‘It’s absolutely vital that we are not wasting public money on sustaining that building.’

Leslie Jones Architecture has now been appointed by the council to consider plans for the site while a cross-party steering group of councillors is working towards a target of having a business case ready this summer.

And Cllr Pitt said this work would be a key part of the regeneration of Commercial Road.

He added: ‘It’s important that we use the opportunity here to leverage regeneration around the city centre.

‘City Centre North is a really important part of that but this project at the southern end potentially gives us a huge, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to look at the decisions made after the Second World War and into the 70s, when the current [Guildhall] plaza was created, to say: “what does that need to look like in order to properly serve as a hub in the 21st century?”

‘If we can get that right both at City Centre North and in the south location they will leverage major change in Commercial Road. They will get developers to look at how they can do things differently, they will get indepndent shops wanting to open, they will drive leisure uses and hospitality and we will have an evolved high street.’

He said the council had previously considered plans to buy up parts of Commercial Road but ruled this option out.

A planning application for City Centre North was lodged in August last year. It covers the area between Hope Street, Charlotte Street and Commercial Road to the east, including the former Tricorn and Sainsbury's sites and sets out ambitions to build up to 2,300 homes.