Eric Wright completes £10m council HQ

Cumbria County Council’s new 60,000 sq ft headquarters has been handed over by Eric Wright Construction.

Staff have already started moving into the new building in Botchergate in a phased programme of relocations.

The £10.4m project, designed by the Manchester office of architect AHR, was approved in January 2015 as the cornerstone of a downsizing project that involves the council moving from 22 separate buildings into just two locations, Botchergate and the Parkhouse Building.

The council said at the time that it faced a £13m maintenance backlog on its estate, and that selling off various assets would allow it to save around £1m a year. The new building houses 450 workstations for the 700 staff that will be based at the site.

Peter Barr, head of pre-construction at Eric Wright, said: “A key challenge with the project was that the budget was set in January 2014, when the market was still quite depressed; we provided some innovative solutions to make sure the programme stayed on budget. As a firm we were instructed on this from feasibility right through to construction, it was a true design and build project.”