Town Hall clocktower work “could be quite expensive”

Temporary Welshpool Town Clerk, Vanessa Voysey, has conceded that there are “all sorts of problems” concerning the urgent work needed to make the Town Hall clocktower safe.

Ms Voysey was speaking at the latest Town Council Services and Property Committee where she provided an update to councillors on the project.

This summer, the council’s operations team discovered that masonry was starting to fall from the clock tower and a drone survey identified the extent of the problem.

It was decided that the work to make it safe should be a matter of urgency and £20,000 of emergency funding was set aside for initial repairs.

But Ms Voysey conceded that they were still struggling to find the right qualified people or companies to take the job on, starting with the scaffolding.

“There’s been considerable work done on this but we are still having problems finding scaffolding,” she said.

“There’s all kinds of problems with this. It’s a very complex matter and could be quite expensive.

“But the operations team are busy now with events in November so we will have to wait until December to press on with this. It’s slow progress but really outside of our control because we have done just about everything we can on that.”

In a previous meeting, it was agreed that the Town Council would apply to the Burgess Lands Trust for financial support, a charity that has a mandate to fund maintenance and repairs for Welshpool Town Council buildings.