Manchester City Council Item 8 Finance Scrutiny Committee 6 September 2012

Manchester City Council Report for Resolution

Report to: Finance Scrutiny Committee – 6 September 2012

Subject: Town Hall Complex Transformation Programme Update

Report of: Geoff Little, Deputy Chief Executive (Performance) Richard Paver, City Treasurer

Summary

This report outlines the progress made to date on implementing the Town Hall Complex Transformation Programme as well as updates on details of the work to relocate the .

Recommendations

The Committee is recommended to note the Town Hall Complex Transformation Programme update.

Wards Affected:

All

Contact Officers:

Name: Geoff Little Position: Deputy Chief Executive (Performance) Telephone: 0161 234 3280 E-mail: [email protected]

Name: Richard Paver Position: City Treasurer Telephone: 0161 234 3564 E-mail: [email protected]

Name: Dave Carty Position: Head of Public Private Partnership Unit Telephone: 0161 245 7240 E-mail: [email protected]

Name: Fiona Worrall Position: Business Partner (People, Strategy and Neighbourhoods) Telephone: 0161 234 3926 E-mail: [email protected]

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Name: Neil MacInnes Position: Head of Libraries, Information and Archives Telephone: 0161 234 1392 E-mail: [email protected]

Background documents (available for public inspection):

The following documents disclose important facts on which the report is based and have been relied upon in preparing the report. Copies of the background documents are available up to 4 years after the date of the meeting. If you would like a copy please contact one of the contact officers above.

Town Hall Complex Transformation Programme Update 8 March 2012, report to the Resources and Governance Overview and Scrutiny Committee from the Deputy Chief Executive (Performance) and the City Treasurer

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1.0 Introduction

The Town Hall Complex Transformation Programme is an ambitious programme which will not only see some of Manchester’s most loved buildings sympathetically refurbished but will also help to:

 Transform the way in which public services are provided to customers, delivering efficiencies together with an excellent customer experience, and improving outcomes for customers in line with the Community Strategy.

 Create the ‘workplace of the future’, transforming the working environment for staff, improving employee culture and ensuring that the Town Hall complex is regarded as a great place to work.

 Create a world-class library offer, of international significance, that the people of Manchester will love to visit and can rightly be proud of.

The last report to Scrutiny Committee, in March 2012, provided a general programme update and specific updates on work to increase public participation in local decision making, the improvement in accessibility of the complex following refurbishment, and measures to improve environmental sustainability. The committee requested that this report updates the Committee on the Programme’s progress and includes details of the work to relocate the .

2.0 Transformation Update

The work of the Transformation Team is structured into 3 programmes:

 Workplace of the Future  Public Service Hub  Libraries Transformation

An update for each programme is provided below.

2.1 Workplace of the Future

Our office accommodation is an important asset that can make a significant contribution to the ongoing transformation of the Council. By working more efficiently we can change the way we use space, releasing funds from maintaining or leasing property that can then be used to re-invest in services. Our accommodation can also help us deliver more customer focused services, be more environmentally friendly, and increase communication and co-operation across teams.

Since the last report to this Committee, work has progressed to finalise the design of the office space. The requirements of services and lessons learned from One First Street continue to be fed into the design of the accommodation in the Complex.

Staff engagement in the design process continues to capture staff ideas for enhancing the office space to make it more personal and productive for teams, whilst

39 Manchester City Council Item 8 Finance Scrutiny Committee 6 September 2012 still maintaining a flexible working environment. Over 250 staff have been on tours of the site. Feedback from the tours is extremely positive, both in terms of the how the buildings will look and feel, and how much effort is being made to engage staff. A design exhibition at One First Street has given staff who have not yet been able to go on a tour a chance to ask questions and get a feel for the design through pictures, floor plans and artists impressions. Findings of 800 responses to a staff survey show that priorities for staff include resolving some ICT and telephony issues, local temperature control and having more scope to personalise their work area (for example introducing more pictures and plants). All these areas are being addressed.

Since the last update, the team have completed the project to move an additional 400 staff into our offices at One First Street, including Children’s Services and the ICT Service. The moves return One First Street to full occupation, allowing the occupants to experience the desk sharing ratios that are key to achieving the property rationalisation savings. The moves also brought forward the vacation of Overseas House and Daisy Mill.

Providing staff with the right tools and technology is also critical to achieving the workplace of the future vision. Since the last update, wireless network access has been provided at One First Street.

2.1.1 Moving back to the Town Hall Complex – the ‘Coming Home Strategy’

A comprehensive coming strategy will ensure the smooth relocation of people, furniture, stock and equipment back to the complex following the refurbishment. Detailed planning will be key as the move back to the refurbished buildings will be considerably more challenging than the move out, as it involves staff from multiple locations, partners, and relocating existing furniture as well as co-ordinating the moves around an ongoing construction programme.

An occupation plan has now been agreed with all Directorates. All customer services will be on the ground floor and staff who support the customer service centre will be on the first floor.

There is still an element of unallocated space in the building, and work is ongoing to fill this space.

An interim Facilities Management (FM) team has been established to manage the design, commissioning and handover of the Town Hall Extension and Central Library in 2013.

2.2 Public Service Hub

The operating model for the Customer Service Centre (CSC) continues to be developed to ensure we deliver the highest quality customer experience. In addition to this, a key element of the programme is to explore opportunities to deliver joined up services with our strategic partners, ensuring a smooth transition from the Customer Service Centre as we know it in One First Street to a fully integrated ‘Public Service Hub’ in the refurbished Town Hall Extension.

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The furniture layout in the Customer Service Centre at One First Street has been reconfigured to create a ‘front line’ to help customers more easily identify where advisors are based and to support managers to better co-ordinate their staff. This is the biggest change the CSC has been through as a service since opening in June 2010 and was implemented as a result of lessons learned and feedback from customers and staff. This will test the layout to inform the design of the new customer service space in the Town Hall Extension. Initial feedback has been positive. We are also working to increase opportunities to for customers to make payments in their neighbourhoods or electronically, reducing the need to travel to the CSC. These initiatives support the Councils ‘channel shift’ strategy, encouraging customers to use cheaper access channels and freeing resource to concentrate on customers who need more support.

The development of the Employment Zone continues with key partners in employment and education. The proposed operating model incorporates services for both customers and employers. For customers it is envisaged to be a City Centre Job Centre Plus, based in the new open plan customer service space. For employers the offer will build on the existing model of the Employer Suite provided by Job Centre Plus and the Economic Regeneration Team. The Employer Suite provides employers with access to a free space to recruit and train employees. Space in the Town Hall Extension will be provided to introduce job ready candidates to potential employers.

Work is continuing with Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to deliver the 24-hour public counter to be based on the ground floor of the THX.

2.3 Libraries Transformation

Central Library is one of the city’s best known and most iconic landmarks. The library has a local, regional, national and international audience both through physical visits and virtual visits and has an important contribution to make to the economic well being of the city and the city region. The transformative vision for Central Library is to broaden its reach to reassert its role at the heart of Manchester’s communities. Before its closure, the ratio of publicly accessible space to back of house was 30:70. After re-opening, this will be reversed, with the public able to directly access 70% of the building.

The library will provide over 500 study spaces, a suite of meeting rooms, performance spaces, a new catering and retail offer and a programme of cultural events and activity, ensuring that the library is an innovative and inspirational visitor attraction for visitors from Manchester and beyond.

A project team has been established, reporting to the Central Library Transformation Project Board, to oversee all aspects of delivering the transformation. A key element of this work will be to feed in to and support the Coming Home strategy for the programme. Key developments are outlined below.

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Fundraising

A fundraising workstream has been initiated and a Development Manager secured on placement until 31 March 2013. The Development Manager will manage grant applications for major awards.

Archives +

A second stage application has now been submitted to The Heritage Lottery Fund. Archives+ will bring together and integrate Manchester’s largest and most important archive heritage. It will create user driven, freely accessible resources for people to engage with histories in a dynamic new type of public space and lead to a greater understanding and appreciation of the whole region. The exhibitions and digital access engagement facilities in the transformed Library and in its on-line presence will create a really democratic approach to the making, sharing and engaging with history across the city and beyond. Archives+ aims to be an exemplar project for digital engagement with archives. A decision on the application is expected from The Heritage Lottery Fund in September 2012.

Business Library – Potential partnership with British Library Business and Intellectual Property Centre

The British Library are keen to roll out their very successful Business and Intellectual Property Centre service to other cities, and a number of positive meetings have taken place to explore the potential of this partnership. Evidence from their own evaluation studies shows that those new businesses that have gained support from The British Library services have seen a radically reduced failure rate compared to the national average, 1 in 10 as opposed to 4 in 10. The British Library have funding available from the Intellectual Property Office to engage consultants to undertake a feasibility study looking into how these services could be configured in Manchester, and these works should be complete by November of this year.

Rare Books and Special Collections – The Treasure House - Central Library is a treasure chest of exceptional rare books and fascinating special collections. The City is the proud custodian of these treasures and the new service concept is committed to getting the collections out from the stacks where they have been stored for 76 years and finding ways of letting Manchester people celebrate their inheritance with a range of physical and virtual exhibitions.

Media Lounge - The new library space in the ground floor of the Town Hall Extension will provide an area dedicated to providing a technology rich space where people can come to learn, create and enjoy. This space will blend into the adjacent catering offer to encourage networking and enable the customer to move easily between social, creative and learning opportunities.

To achieve this within the tight resource constraints, we will need to work in partnership with others and develop new ways of working that enable our staff to focus on value adding activities, with much more customer self service for transactional activities. Ensuring integration between library staff and customer service staff will provide quality customer services and essential flexibility.

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3.0 Regeneration, Employment and Skills

The Regeneration, Employment and Skills Plan (RESP) is in place to deliver the commitments made by the contractor (Laing O’Rourke) in their bid, which support MCC’s strategic regeneration and employment objectives. There are four workstreams: employment; employability and learning; upskilling and community involvement; and local business engagement.

3.1 Employment

Around 400 people are expected to work on the Town Hall Complex Transformation project, with one in five jobs going to apprentices honing their skills in areas from general construction to ultra-specialist restoration work. The target is to recruit 66 apprentices to work on the construction programme and to support a further 19 existing apprenticeships working for the contractor and its suppliers.

As of August 2012 we have a commitment from the principal contractor, partners and supply chain of 63 project initiated Apprentices. 47 of these commitments have now been employed by their respective employer.

3.2 Employability and Learning

The Employability and Learning workstream aims to develop links with schools to promote learning, work experience placements and career opportunities associated with the refurbishment programme. To date, there have been 22 events with primary school children, 10 events with secondary school children and 10 work placements with the project. There have also been 140 tours of the site for staff and stakeholders.

The main event since the last update was the Time Capsule Competition. Pupils aged 7 to 11 in schools citywide were invited to suggest an item to be buried in a time capsule beneath Library Walk. The theme for the competition was ‘I Love Manchester’ and the items put forward had to represent what the students loved about the city in 2012. Nearly 800 entries were received from students from across 20 schools. The entries were reviewed by a panel that included Councillor Khan, 3 members of the Youth Council and representatives from the sponsors (Laing O’Rourke, NG Baileys and ANSA). The panel selected 11 winning suggestions, which included a song written by a student, a sculpture of a bee, the invention of graphene (Professors Geim and Novoselov provided copies of the Nobel Prize certificates), and Manchester City and Manchester United football shirts (the clubs provided signed shirts). The students were invited to a site tour, culminating in a ceremony where they received a prize from the Deputy Lord Mayor. The prizes were book tokens for the student (£50) and the school (£100). The event was well attended by the students, who were joined by the Deputy Lord Mayor, Councillor Khan, Fran Leighton and Vicky Bowen (Team GB Women’s Water Polo team), Claire Dixon (Olympic touch bearer) and Alex Williams (former Manchester City goalkeeper and community champion for the club).

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3.3 Upskilling & Community

All members of staff who are present on the project for 6 months or more will be offered an upskilling assessment to identify useful courses from our training providers. There have been a range of events engaging the community in the project, including sensory impaired people, primary schools and archive service users.

3.4 Local Business Engagement

The Local Business Engagement workstream continues to support Corporate Procurement to procure locally. As of July 2012, of the total procurement by value, 36% is being spent within Manchester (up 21% from May 2012) and 51% with Greater Manchester companies (down 17%). A further 8% has been placed within the Northwest (no change) and 5% nationally (down 4%).

4.0 Construction Programme Update

4.1 CL and THX Works The construction programme is well advanced with work in both buildings progressing towards reoccupation in line with the key programme dates. The design continues to be developed to capture the needs of stakeholders whilst at the same time taking into account the constraints of the budget, the existing fabric, the requirements of the Planning Authority and English Heritage and the restrictions and disciplines imposed by the construction contracts. Key milestones are:

January 2011 Refurbishment of the buildings commenced September 2011 Construction Contracts formally signed April 2013 THX reoccupation commences August 2013 THX reoccupation completed (except Extended Central Library areas in lower ground and ground floor) October 2013 Central Library refurbishment completed December 2013 Central Library high density book storage available for book storage March 2014 Central Library reopens to the public Autumn 2014 St Peter’s Square works completed

Demolitions, structural alterations and interventions commenced meaningfully in April 2011 with the bulk of these works completed by December 2011. In the case of the Central Library the new structure for the book storage, the ground floor and the Reading Room is now complete, structural works for the new vertical circulation core are complete and the remaining floor slabs are now being removed. In the THX the new ribbon rooflight is complete with the new bridge links between the Rates Hall and the new CSC about to commence. Restoration of the Rates Hall ceiling following removal of the asbestos contamination is almost complete with redecoration of the beams about to commence. Primary plant and equipment for the new mechanical and electrical services installations are well in hand.

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The upper floors of the THX, (with the exception of the 8th floor for construction programming purposes), are now receiving new service distribution and lighting rafts, floor grommets, internal meeting room partitions and finishes. The windows have been refurbished on internal elevations, and are almost complete on external elevations, and the refurbishing of walls, floors and ceilings is progressing. The model office solution is now agreed and alternative finishes and colour palettes are being sampled before the area is made available for inspection in September. Whilst this is somewhat later than planned, the benefits of extended trialling will bring added benefits to Members, Senior Managers and staff.

Works to the roof of the THX to carry out lead work repairs and recover dormer windows are progressing well and works are about to commence on the Central Library.

Overall, the project construction works remain on programme, and while there are challenges to maintaining this situation, these have been identified and are being actively managed.

4.2 Glazed Link Building

The design of the new glazed link building between the CL and the THX has been submitted for Planning Permission and Listed Building Consent. There are a number of detailed technical matters which may impact upon the implementation programme but these are being actively addressed. This could delay delivery of the Glazed Link. The Customer Service Centre in the THX could operate without the Link building until the works are completed in the Central Library. Primary staff access will be from Lloyd Street and will not be affected by the Link building.

4.3 St Peter’s Square

The St Peter’s Square international design competition was recommenced in line with the development of proposals for the Second City Crossing. Latz & Partners, a Munich based Landscape Design Consultancy, supported by Arup, a Manchester Engineering Design Consultancy, were appointed as the successful competition entrant and are now co-located in Heron House. A planning application is due for submission in September 2012.

4.4 Cenotaph Update

The Manchester Cenotaph is a grade II* listed structure located in St Peter’s Square. It was designed by Sir to commemorate the end of First World War and the foundation stone was laid in 1923.

In considering the relocation of this structure Manchester City Council appointed Heritage Architecture Ltd to develop a design and assist in consultations with heritage bodies and veterans groups. As part of the consideration for a new more suitable location for (away from the Metrolink platforms and in a more appropriate setting) a number of sites around Manchester were considered. The option analysis prepared to assess the various sites concluded that the site adjacent to the former

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Peace Gardens to the rear of the was the most suitable. This site also consolidated the event and its association with the Town Hall. The Council has agreed the strategy for the relocation of the Cenotaph, following public consultation on the proposals.

A detailed Planning Application and Listed Building Consent Application (along with the Planning Application for Engineering Works to the Peace Gardens and Listed Building and Planning Applications for the dismantling and relocation of the St Peters Cross) are due to be considered by the Planning Committee on 13 September 2012. Subject to Planning Application approval and Listed Building Consent, the relocation is planned to be completed between the Remembrance days of 2012 and 2013.

The detailed methodology for dismantling and reconstruction works have been reviewed with the main contractor, specialist sub-contractor and heritage consultant, and all planning documentation has been reviewed to avoid any unnecessary delays or conditions.

5.0 Finance Update

The actual spend to date is £72m, which is made up of £23.8m decant costs, £41.1m construction costs and £7.1m programme office costs. Expenditure is regularly monitored against forecast budget. Capital costs are within budget, and revenue costs are being met from reserve.

6.0 Conclusion

The Town Hall Complex Transformation Programme is making good progress.

The construction programme is on track to be delivered on time and within budget.

The success of the Customer Service Centre is being built upon with sound progress being made to ensure partners are brought on board and engaged in the development of the Public Service Hub.

The workplace of the future transformation journey is well underway as it gathers momentum to ensure the required cultural and behavioural change is both embedded within OFS prior to the move back to the THX and also rolled out across the wider organisation.

Planning and Listed Building Consent applications have been submitted for the proposed relocation of the Manchester Cenotaph.

7.0 Recommendation

The Committee is recommended to note the progress being made on the Town Hall Complex Transformation Programme.

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