Council blames lack of cash for decision to demolish local landmark.
Preston’s iconic bus station is to be demolished with Town Hall bosses claiming they cannot afford to keep it open.
The city’s council has admitted defeat on efforts to save the building, saying it would cost £23 million to refurbish it and more than £5 million to just keep it standing.
The decision will be rubber-stamped next week and talks will start immediately about building a new, smaller bus station on the site of the old one.
Council leader Peter Rankin said the authority could no longer afford to pay nearly £300,000 a year to keep the building standing, with its budgets set to be squeezed by further spending cuts within weeks.
He said the council had hired experts and spoken with developers about refurbishing and transforming it before ruling out every option except demolition, which will cost an estimated £1.8m.
Council leader Peter Rankin said: “My job is to protect the services we deliver and to be spending the best part of £300,000 every year on this building makes that very difficult. The easy decision would be to refurbish it but that would mean borrowing £23 million and paying £2 million in interest alone on that debt, I cannot justify putting that amount of taxpayers’ money into keeping a building open for 20 years. We are left with a difficult decision, but an obvious choice which is to demolish the current bus station and work with the county council to build a modern one in its place.”
Read more here.
