Event Central Fargate: Sheffield city centre entertainment venue can go ahead following halt

Sheffield City Council’s finance and performance policy committee agreed at an extraordinary meeting yesterday (August 28) to increase the budget for the four-storey venue from an original estimate of £6.9m in March 2022 to a total of £14,408,758.26.

The revised funding involves £6,546,973 from the government Future High Streets Fund, £766,158 from the council Corporate Investment Fund, £879,564 from the Sheffield City Region Get Building Fund and £6,216,063 of South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) Gainshare money.

The decision came to a regular meeting of the committee on August 18. LibDem members argued successfully for the delay because they felt they did not have enough information about why the cost had risen so much to agree to the increased budget.

The special meeting was held today because construction work is due to start on the project next Monday, September 1. Any delay beyond then would have incurred extra costs.

A report to the committee said that the result of two tendering exercises in 2022 and 2023 showed that the project was undeliverable for £6.9m and the prices quoted by companies increased the second time around.

Control

It added: “Finally a cost-led design and build approach has been adopted, giving the council more control and allowing officers to work with a nominated contractor to find the lowest budget achievable to deliver the required scope to meet the outputs required of the Future High Streets Fund application.

“On the basis of this agreed cost and improved risk approach, an application was made for additional Gainshare funding in order to increase the overall budget envelope. This funding was awarded in early August.”

Interim head of regeneration Alan Seasman said that extensive consultation with the cultural sector proved the need for a central entertainment venue of the type planned, which will have an audience capacity of 200.

He added: “It’s more than just a performance space, it’ll bring forward city centre space for visual arts, music and theatre production, it’ll provide performance and exhibition space, it will help to boost the visitor economy, it will provide co-working and collaboration space.”

Event Central is being created by renovating shops stretching from 20-26 Fargate to create the ground-floor performance space with meeting and co-working areas on the four floors above.

LibDem group leader Coun Martin Smith said a written briefing provided before the meeting contained lots of information that would have been extremely helpful to get before the last meeting. He added: “I think the reason why we’re here today is because we didn’t have it.”

Confusion

He said that a redacted version, omitting any commercially sensitive information, should be made available to the public, which was agreed.

Coun Smith said: “I think one of the other sources of confusion here was there was such a long period of time between the outline business case and the final business case. Is there anything we can do to stop that happening because I think that is a major source of what is the problem here.”

Mr Seasman responded that the reason for the gap was mainly the tendering processes and the need following that to look again at the project, which was not a straightforward one that needed some redesign.

Coun Glynis Chapman asked: “Who gave permission to just continue with this scheme with this enormous overspends, not coming to finance and asking? This seems to have gone on and on for years, the price is going up and nobody has said is this okay.

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“No matter where the finance is coming from, it’s still incumbent on Sheffield to scrutinise how other people’s money is spent.”

Mr Seasman said that changes in the economy caused by issues such as Covid and Ukraine have put costs up. He said that funders have been kept up to date as well as various areas of the council, although he took the point about the finance committee.

Value

Funding bodies had assessed the project and remain satisfied it should go ahead.

He said: “The project itself still is very good value for money in terms of the outputs it provides, so whereas the cost has gone up it is still very good value for money.”

Committee vice-chair Coun Alan Levery said: “We’re in a committee system where pre-scrutiny is key and pre-scrutiny of a project like this is absolutely key so we understand where it’s going.”

He said the committee should have been made aware at the time that the cost of the project was rising significantly and the funding plan should also have been brought for consideration.

Coun Douglas Johnson said: “We all know that Fargate really needs a boost to it. This is described as a flagship opportunity and it really is, in terms of location and in terms of what we want in the city centre with entertainment venues of this capacity which we know we could really do with.”

He added that all political parties on the transport, regeneration and climate policy committee had been briefed, as had cross-party members of the council regeneration board.

Investment

Coun Johnson said the scheme was “stonkingly good” value for money and has managed to attract millions of pounds of investment coming into the city.

“Was this committee seriously going to say no, we’ll turn down this extra £6.2m from SYMCA and just not have it and be left with an empty building in the middle of Fargate?”

Coun Smith said that some of the information referred to by Coun Johnson only came to light following the last meeting. “Had that information been available at the time, which I think would have been the correct process, we would have all been the wiser.”

Committee chair Coun Zahira Naz said: “I think us halting this project and asking for a deeper briefing was the right thing to do at the time, just because there was lots of questions that were unanswered and which we really needed that briefing.

“That enabled us to scrutinise to ensure due diligence.”

She said that work would take place to ensure that committee members are kept in the loop and have all the information they need to make decisions.

Coun Naz added: “People say to me that big city centre regeneration shouldn’t just be about shops, sometimes we have to give a reason to visit, and this could be an excellent flagship project for that.”