Category: Uncategorized

Hornsey Town Hall Creative Trust is taking part in the formal procurement process for the regeneration of Hornsey Town Hall.

We worked with the council to draft the tender information, at the heart of which is long-term sustainable community and arts use alongside the much-needed refurbishment of this historic building.  Over the coming months, the Trust will be evaluating and scoring developer/operator proposals for community and creative uses at Hornsey Town Hall as part of the procurement process. All bids will be considered and scored according to the criteria laid out in the tender documents.

Haringey Council’s most recent update on the procurement process can be read here [http://www.haringey.gov.uk/news/innovative-ideas-hornsey-town-hall-s-future]. It also gives details of the extension of the temporary lease granted to ANA who run The Arts Centre at Hornsey Town Hall.

If you want to read through the community consultation on the future of Hornsey Town Hall, undertaken by the Trust in 2015, please click here [150608_hth_community_use_and_access_paper

There was a debate on procurement and the future of Hornsey Town Hall at a full Council meeting last night, triggered by the petition from Hornsey Town Hall Appreciation Society. You can watch the debate here http://www.haringey.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/197448

It starts at 1.10.20 and finishes at 1.33.50

The tender for the refurbishment and development of Hornsey Town Hall has been published.    Hornsey Town Hall Creative Trust will be part of the evaluation team, focussing on proposals for commununity access and use.

A summary  can be found here http://hthcrouchend.com

and there is a link to the tender here

http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:402048-2015:TEXT:EN:HTML

The council’s press release about the tender is here:

http://www.haringey.gov.uk/libraries-sport-and-leisure/culture-and-entertainment/visiting-haringey/hornsey-town-hall

As many of you know, Haringey Council (LBH) is about to start the formal procurement process to find a developer for the Hornsey Town Hall site. This complex process is governed by strict EU rules and is very tightly regulated. The tender will be published on Delta-eSourcing.com, the recognised site for public sector tenders.

The Trust has entered into a legal agreement with LBH in order to be a member of the panel that will evaluate developer/operator proposals for long-term, sustainable community use at Hornsey Town Hall. All bids have to be considered and scored equally. We’ve also made sure the Council has contacted all those groups that have expressed interest in the Town Hall to ensure that their details are made available to prospective bidders as part of the tender documents.

Rigorous selection process

All bidders will be asked to confirm that they will meet at the very least LBH’s minimum requirements for community access and use but, crucially, bidders will score more – and are asked to provide specific information – for enhanced community use, i.e. beyond the minimum requirements. They will be asked to provide proposals that facilitate cultural, community and other activities in the Town Hall that meet our stated aspirations for the building. We also want to hear about how often they would propose to make this space available, how they see the management and governance of community use and how they will ensure its long term viability.

No one should be under any illusion about the rigour of the procurement process. This needs to tie in, of course, with the restoration of the building that will take it off the At Risk Register and make it fit-for-purpose in the 21st century so that the full potential of HTH can be realised.

To do that, it’s estimated that it will cost at least £10 million. That money will come from the development of the land to the rear of the Town Hall, with the same developer taking on responsibility for both the development of the land and the necessarily high-quality refurbishment of the Town Hall. That certainly doesn’t rule out a separate operator coming in to run the Town Hall on a day-to-day basis following its refurbishment.

Next steps

So the next twelve months are crucial for the future of Hornsey Town Hall. Many in the community are questioning why we feel it’s important to work in partnership with Haringey Council. HTHCT evolved out of local passion and action over 10 years ago and the response that the Appreciation Society is able to muster today is evidence that that passion in the community has not waned in the intervening years. We’ve always believed it’s important to work with the Council in order to help influence the final outcome and find a long-term, sustainable future for the building that meets community aspirations rather than against.

But that doesn’t mean we’ve always agreed about the Council’s approach to the Town Hall. We’ve plugged and plugged away about the importance of community access and use of the Town Hall, so clearly articulated in the consultation we undertook earlier this year (http://hornsey-town-hall.org.uk/index.php/consultation/).

Like everyone else campaigning for the Town Hall, we’re driven by the need to find a viable creative, ambitious solution that works for everyone, not just the people of Crouch End but the whole of Haringey and beyond.

This post contains the text of our newsletter sent 23rd October 2015

We were very sorry to hear that Judy Bax died on 18th August. Judy, a former Haringey Labour Councillor, was chair of the Hornsey Town Hall Advisory Panel and then the Community Partnership Board, and worked tirelessly to ensure HTH has a sustainable future that would represent community aspirations.

We send our condolences to Judy’s family. We understand there will be a private family funeral; a memorial service for Judy will take place in the early autumn. As soon as we have details of that and the site for leaving messages of condolence, we will post them here.

Former councillor David Winskill, (a minority group rep on the Advisory Panel and Community Partnership Board from its early days) adds,

“Working with Judy was an absolute joy: she was one of the most intelligent and decent people I met as a councillor. She was crucial in opening up the debate about Hornsey Town Hall and made it possible to develop a vision for the use of the building that reflected to aspirations of all Haringey residents. Judy will be greatly missed.”

On 13 August 2015, Haringey Council announced that Hornsey Town Hall and the Town Hall Square have been designated an asset of community value (ACV) in recognition of their cultural significance to Crouch End and Haringey.

This follows an application made by Crouch End Community Arts Festival.

You can read Haringey’s statement here
It also outlines what ACV listing means in the context of the forthcoming procurement process.

We were told on Friday by Haringey Council that the steering group meeting scheduled for Monday 29 June has been postponed. As soon as we have a new date, we’ll let you know.

Many of you will now know about the decision by Haringey Council’s Cabinet to move ahead with the procurement process for Hornsey Town Hall.

You can watch the webcam of the meeting here; the section on Hornsey Town Hall begins at 30’43”.

It’s worth listening to because it contains several references to the importance of community access and use at the Town Hall alongside a comment from the Leader, Cllr Claire Kober, who says that if the right solution can’t be found, the Council needs to be bold enough to “regroup and take the tough decision of saying it’s probably rught that we don’t go down this route … either stop the procurement and go out again or rethink the strategy more fundamentally.”

We’re very aware that there were very many representations to the council ahead of the Cabinet meeting asking them to delay the process.   We completely understand this but in the light of the council decision being made, we think it’s vitally important for the Trust to play its part in the current procurement process to ensure that there is a voice for the community in that process and that we hold the Council to account.

What happens next?

There is an HTH steering group meeting on 29 June, which the Trust attends with the Council, after which we will report back in more detail.

The procurement brief for developers/operators will be jointly-drafted and we also expect our consultation report to be published as part of that brief.

We have asked that the scoring of the evaluation is formalised (we know that community access and use will score 30% of the marks, more than any other part of the tender).

We have asked how developer/operators will engage with the community.

We are currently in discussion with LBH on how best to ensure that all interested parties, whether it is a local community organisation, a specialist arts operator, a higher education body, and so on, can be included in the procurement process and introduced to developer/operators within the OJEU process.

We also want to know how the quality of the tenders will be evaluated, particularly in relation to the architectural heritage of the building.

We also need to ensure that the tender is publicised as widely as possible to attract developers and operators with a creative, imaginative and sustainable vision for the Town Hall and the Town Hall square.

In September 2015, a brief will be published on Contracts Finder, the portal where all local government tenders are published (www.gov.uk/contracts-finder).    If the timetable remains the same, PQQs will need to be in during October, with invitations to tender going out in November and the deadline for receiving tenders, April 2016

In the meantime

We would love to hear your thoughts and concerns.  We are also looking at similar projects around the UK which showcase the type of uses that might work in Hornsey Town Hall.

Here are a couple for starters:

Shoreditch Town Hall (www.shoreditchtownhall.com)

Southwark Town Hall (www.alumnodevelopments.com/projects/southwark-town-hall)

Please tell us about projects you know about and come and visit them with us.

Email us: hornseytownhalltrust@gmail.com

Facebook  HornseyTownHallCreativeTrust

@Hornsey_T_Hall

Our report on the community consultation on the future use of and access to Hornsey Town Hall will go to Cabinet on 16th June, as an appendix to the council’s paper on the Town Hall. The paper being presented to Cabinet seeks approval for the council to run a procurement exercise to select a developer (or a consortium of developer/operator) to build the housing on the car park to the rear of the site, restore the Town Hall and operate it (or work in partnership with an operator to operate it).

The full Cabinet paper can be read here. As it is a large document of over 500 pages (the HTH papers run from page 179 to 206), we have created a cut down version relevant to the Town Hall, which can be downloaded here.

Over 300 people shared their views with us, either through the online survey or at one of our workshops, which we, the Hornsey Town Hall Creative Trust, have analysed and summarised in a report on the consultation.

We would like to thank again everyone who took part in the consultation about community use and access at Hornsey Town Hall. Over 300 people shared their views with us, either through the online survey or at one of our workshops, which we have analysed and summarised in a report on the consultation. You can download the full report here.

Our report on community use and access will go to Cabinet on 16th June, as an appendix to the council’s paper on the Town Hall. Furthermore, this report will be used to create the tender brief for developers so that their tender proposal will respond to what you want to see at the Town Hall.

For a more detailed update please read here.