FUNDING worth more than £500,000 is being sought as a ‘contingency’ to ensure the ambitious Shire Hall project will be open on time.

West Dorset District Council’s strategy committee is being asked to allow £347,000 to cover any capital costs not met by funding bids. The committee will also discuss a request to provide £236,000 to the Shire Hall Dorchester Trust (SHDT) for working capital and future maintenance costs.

A report set to be put before councillors today states that the funds are needed ‘to ensure that, having committed to the capital works and in the event that other funding applications are unsuccessful, Shire Hall can open on time for spring 2018 with a robust business plan in place for the next 25 years’.

Work is already underway to convert Shire Hall into a historic court house attraction, telling the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Martha Brown, who inspired Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, among others. The project is seen as a key part of the redevelopment of Dorchester, along with Dorset County Museum’s extension plans, improvements to High West Street and the reopening of the historic Kings Arms hotel. The Dorset Echo reported last week how owners of the Kings Arms, Stay Original Co, announced that the re-opening has been pushed back to ‘early 2018’.

The contingency fund is being requested to be a ‘last resort’, the report states, following higher than expected tenders for the main work contract and an ‘altered approach’ from Heritage Lottery Fund. Several funding applications have been submitted and passed the first round – but they have not yet been confirmed.

The report states that the tenders were higher than the 2013 estimates due to a ‘combination of deterioration of the building in the intervening three years and discoveries from additional survey work carried out as part of the detailed design process’.

The report adds: “As a result, West Dorset District Council committed an additional sum of £206,264 to pay for some of the shortfall, with an understanding at the time that the rest of the shortfall and a contingency might be funded from the HLF. Following the Autumn Statement in 2016, the HLF altered their approach to additional funding of their projects and could no longer provide this.

“This created a situation where, in order to deliver the project on time for opening in 2018 a contingency of ‘last resort’ is required.

The committee meets at South Walks House today.