News / Council and SLAP still working on solution to sagging floors at North Ness offices
SHETLAND Islands Council is still working with landlord SLAP to find a permanent solution that will enable local authority staff to return to its office HQ at Lerwick’s North Ness.
Around 200 staff were evacuated from the building, often referred to locally as the “White House”, at short notice in September after engineers discovered that there was some sagging on the building’s upper floors.
The matter was discussed during a behind closed doors session lasting more than two hours during Wednesday’s full council meeting at Shetland Museum and Archives.
Afterwards, SIC corporate services director Christine Ferguson confirmed there had been “deflection in some parts of the building”, with the sagging causing doors in some partition walls on the second and third floors to stick.
The £7.3 million office block is owned by SLAP, the property arm of Shetland Charitable Trust, but the council is the property manager as well as, realistically, the only prospective tenant.
“There are engineers – specialist engineers – who’ve been employed to come and do extensive testing on the building,” she said.
“We are working very closely with SLAP on the solution, and the key concern for members is around services and making sure there’s continuity of services and support for staff while they’re not in that building.”
Engineer tests remains ongoing, meaning it is not possible to put a timescale on when staff might be able to return to the North Ness complex, which opened in April 2012.
But Ferguson said the key was to find a permanent solution so staff do not have to move in and out multiple times.
During last week’s policy and resources committee meeting, SIC lawyer Jan Riise said that having to disperse staff throughout various buildings was costing the council money.
Ferguson said an example of that were office premises in Burgh Road that had previously been leased out. After the lease ended council staff moved in, meaning the local authority is missing out on rental income.
She said the SIC was “very anxious” to minimise the disruption to services and staff, and so far she believes it has “done remarkably well”.
“The move was done very quickly, very efficiently, and staff have really worked hard to settle in and make sure there is minimal disruption, and we’re very pleased with how that went.”
It is not clear exactly where the liability will fall, though there is a distinct possibility that the matter may end up being resolved in court, but Ferguson said the suggestion that the repair bill may exceed £1 million was “speculation”.
“If people are speculating along those lines, then clearly there’s not a lot I can do about that,” she said.
Ferguson insisted the dispute was “not about reputation, or reputational damage” but the fact there are “contractual issues that we must observe” that cannot be discussed in public at this stage.
With SIC leader Gary Robinson and council convener Malcolm Bell both out of Shetland, Wednesday’s meeting was chaired by vice-convener Cecil Smith. He said afterwards that he did not want to make any comment, leaving Ferguson to take questions from the press.
During the section of the meeting that was held in public, councillor Jonathan Wills had suggested the council might have been “a little more forthcoming” with the public in the past three months.
Last week councillor Theo Smith voiced the concerns of several members about the White House situation, describing the lack of information available to them as “embarrassing”.
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