Ownership of Bognor Regis Town Hall could change

At Arun’s policy and finance committee meeting on Wednesday July 11, members voted to allow council officers to explore the possibility of transferring/selling the building back to Bognor Regis Town Council, as well as making a bid to the national government’s Community Ownership Fund to help modernise the building.

This was accompanied by the recommendation to move the council’s back offices in Bognor Regis Town Hall to the Littlehampton Civic Centre, and to devise a business plan for breaking the front and back offices in Littlehampton into separate locations and assess the costs of doing so.

Leader of the opposition Shaun Gunner (Con, Rustington East) raised the fact that committee members Matt Stanley (LDem Marine), Jim Brooks (Ind, Marine Ward), Roger Nash (Lab, Pevensey) and Francis Oppler (LDem, Orchard) are also current town councillors.

He said: “I’m surprised this report has no costings to it – I would imagine based on my own experience that that building has a valuation of somewhere around £1 million.

“If we were to transfer that freely to Bognor Regis I would hope that every other parish would receive a similar benefit in kind because obviously this would be a significant subsidy from the region to Bognor Regis.”

Mr Oppler said they weren’t making any hard decisions, just commissioning council officers to assess the feasibility of the town hall transfer, with that decision resting with the economy committee.