Here’s who could take over Lewes council offices and where authority might be moving to

On Thursday (February 3), cabinet members agreed proposals to move out of the authority’s main offices at Southover House and look to lease them to the Charleston Trust.

According to council papers, Charleston is looking to use the building as a new creative centre, to include exhibition, office, educational and workshop spaces.

In the long term, Lewes District Council would relocate, opening new offices within the UTC building in Newhaven, while maintaining a satellite location, described as a contact point, within Lewes town. 

Council leader Zoe Nicholson (Green) said the proposals would simultaneously generate tourism for Lewes, while also allowing the council to rationalise its office space. 

Cllr Nicholson said: “We need to make sure that our assets do the heavy lifting and that our services do not. As we face financial uncertainty, we need to make sure that our services do not experience any reduction in quality or service. 

“Therefore what is being proposed here in terms of a meanwhile use of [Southover House] is an exciting opportunity for Lewes as a town.

“But equally it sits alongside it being an exciting opportunity for us to locate our offices and customer touch points into different places across the district, including Newhaven and Lewes and the possibility of Peacehaven, so that we have a much broader strategy of how we welcome and support and help people to use our services.”

The impetus for Lewes District Council’s move is partly because Southover House is underutilised. According to council papers, the office typically had 41 per cent of its desks empty even before the pandemic.

According to budget papers (discussed at the same meeting), the move is expected to generate savings of around £115,000 in 2022/23.

Initially, the plan would be to move the main offices to the UTC building in Newhaven (assuming the council is successful in finalising its acquisition) with a short-term contact point up at County Hall in Lewes. 

In the longer term, the council would look to find alternative premises for the  contact point within Lewes town centre.

While unanimously agreed by cabinet, the proposals saw significant concerns raised by Conservative group leader Isabelle Linington, who pointed to concerns raised by the council’s Policy and Performance Advisory Committee (PPAC) around the proposals. 

PPAC had unanimously resolved not to support the proposals on the grounds that ‘a full and detailed business case’ should be produced before any final decision was made. 

Cllr Linington said: “There are just no figures in this paper. There are no costings about how much it will cost to rent rooms up at County Hall and there are no figures about what rent Charleston would pay.”

She added: “I can see an argument for maybe eventually moving to Newhaven and you need to save the money on Southover House, I understand all that.

“But I think it is just too early to just accept all this now. That is basically what PPAC said. It was not just the Conservatives [saying that], it was cross-party, so it was your backbenchers as well.

“I think it is just premature to accept it now when we’ve got no figures or a proper business case about how the whole thing is going to work.”

Cllr Linington also criticised the lack of transparency about how Charleston had been identified as a potential lessee, saying there was little evidence that other options had been considered. 

These concerns were not shared by cabinet members, however, who said there was a need to ‘move at pace’ to secure the deal with Charleston. 

Cllr Nicholson said: “The use of this building for a creative, exhibition, work, education, learning, training space is really exciting not just for the town but I think for the whole district and possibly internationally. 

“For me, it is like Lewes becomes a bit like St Ives in terms of having the equivalent of a Tate Modern. It will have an amazing impact on both what happens in our high street and how we support tourism. 

“This is also why I am not going to be supporting the PPAC recommendations. We have got to move with pace. 

“We have been discussing what to do with this building since the pandemic first hit in March 2020. It is time for us to make a decision.”

Cabinet members also highlighted that the lease to Charleston would be a ‘meanwhile use’, rather than a permanent decision at this point. This use would be reviewed, once up and running.

However, it was also heard that Charleston has expressed interest in buying the freehold of Southover House at some point in the future.