WARRINGTON Borough Council is leaving its ancestral home at the town hall so it can work on preserving the Grade I Listed building, retaining the Mayoral office, while operating more efficiently from Time Square.
In recent weeks the council has been working to move services away from the town hall, to the more suitable council offices at Time Square.
Deputy leader and cabinet member for communities, culture and leisure, Cllr Jean Flaherty, said: “In recent weeks we have been working to move services out of the Town Hall complex, and into 1 Time Square.
“Warrington Town Hall is a special part of our heritage, and in recent years it has been underutilised. We know how important the Town Hall is to Warrington and we’re ambitious about its future. We want to give the Town Hall a new lease of life and a new purpose – and we’re currently working hard to identify long-term options for the building, to ensure it can be preserved as an iconic local landmark for years to come and whilst we don’t have all the answers yet we’re excited about the possibilities available to us.
“To enable this to happen, the few remaining council functions based at the Town Hall – apart from the office of the Mayor of Warrington – have moved to 1 Time Square. Doing this also provides a number of benefits for us.
“We have said previously that as a council, we need to redefine how we operate to become a more efficient, modern and member-led organisation. Decanting colleagues from the Town Hall and into 1 Time Square provides us with opportunities. By bringing together the Town Hall-based services and councillors into 1 Time Square, we can ensure that 1 Time Square becomes both the council’s operational and civic centre.
“Part of the office move from the Town Hall will also see rooms 15, 16 and 17 enhanced, with livestream technology, similar to the Council Chamber in the Town Hall. This will enable committee and council meetings, such as Cabinet and Full Council, to operate and be broadcast live from 1 Time Square. The majority of our council meetings aren’t currently broadcast, so the ability to do this will bring public benefit by opening up our democratic and decision-making forums. The office move will require us to identify further meeting spaces and will need us to focus on how well the current meeting room suite is being used.
“The relocation of staff has now given us the opportunity to move ahead with carrying out essential works within the building, so we can explore opportunities for its future use.”
*According to the National Heritage List for England maintained by Historic England, the main house and its two detached service wings are all designated at Grade I status, which is reserved for buildings of exceptional architectural and historic interest.
Built in 1750 as a Palladian-style country house named Bank Hall, designed by the famous architect James Gibbs. Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner famously described it as “the finest house of its date in south Lancashire.
Thomas Patten, a wealthy local industrialist, had the building constructed as his family home, then known as Bank Hall.
In 1870, the Wilson-Patten family sold the estate to the Warrington Borough Council for £23,500. The council opened the surrounding land as the town’s first public park (Bank Park) and converted the mansion into the Warrington Town Hall, which it remains today.
