North Somerset Council plans to sell its Castlewood office complex to the police
Councillors will vote today (14 July) on the plans
North Somerset Council plans to sell its Castlewood office complex to the police for £5m less than it bought it for.
The council bought the large office block in Clevedon in 2010 for £12.6m. Now councillors will vote on Tuesday July 14 on whether to sell it to Avon and Somerset Police for £7.5m.
550 mainly desk-based police staff would be based at the building, which would be a “regional policy hub” to support specialist policing activities. A report going before councillors said: “This has no impact on the Avon and Somerset Police HQ building in Portishead.”
The report said: “The proposed scheme is expected to deliver substantial economic benefits, including the creation of on-site employment, supply chain and contractor opportunities. … The intention is for long-term occupation of a strategic employment site.”
North Somerset Council purchased Castlewood, when it was run by the Conservatives, as its primary office building. The current partnership administration, which has run the council since 2019, decided to sell off the building in 2022 and has relocated staff to Weston-super-Mare Town Hall and other locations.
The council been planning to demolish the office building turn it into housing, with the 4.6 hectare site earmarked for 120 homes in its local plan. But the report going before councillors said: “Noting that the plan makes provision for 24,495 homes over the plan period, against a target of 23,700 homes, this is not considered to have a significant detrimental effect on housing delivery across the district.”
It added that keeping the current building in use would reduce the carbon impacts of demolishing it, and that the £7.5m price tag would bring in “significantly more” than then £3m the council had expected to make from selling housing.
The council has never paid off its original purchase of the building. Through “accounting arrangements,” it has been covering the cost of the building from its day-to-day revenue budget and has paid off £7.96m so far with £4.64m left to repay, the report states.
If approved by councillors, the council expects to complete on the sale by December 30.