WITH regard to Tuesday’s article (Echo, February 21) about the refurbishment of County Hall, there is no roof garden planned at County Hall and there never was.

Four years ago when options were being looked at for reducing our property numbers, an architect’s sketch featured a balcony on level four planted up with greenery.

It was attractive but the plan has only ever been to reduce the number of buildings, make better use of council buildings and provide decent workspace.

In 2010 we owned over 750 properties across the county.

Having buildings costs money, so in order to reduce our overheads the ‘Way We Work’ programme was agreed and implemented to cut building and associated costs, invest in the remaining buildings and increase the use of these significantly.

We have planned the extra use of some buildings and have increased the rate of identifying and disposing of surplus properties. Our target is to reduce the running cost of our estate over a five-year period by £3.2m per annum.

To date we have disposed of or ‘let go’ 162 properties, amounting to about 24 per cent of the estate’s footprint. This has generated capital receipts of £10.5m over the past two years and has already led to £3m coming out of previous maintenance budgets for next year.

Other savings on property have been attributed to help savings in directorates including children’s services. This is us doing things differently to make savings rather than cutting services, ‘back office’ savings as they are so often referred to.

The work to adapt and improve County Hall and indeed other office accommodation across the county is part of that programme. In County Hall we will accommodate at least 300 additional staff within the building, giving the authority savings of £560,000 per annum by disposing of surplus office buildings in and around Dorchester.

In addition, these works will also reduce the maintenance costs on the building and will improve its sustainability, which will also generate cost savings.

The business case that we are working on and which shows the return on investment has been included in Cabinet reports and has been the subject of scrutiny committee discussions and has seen cross party support.

CLLR ROBIN COOK

Cabinet member for organisational development and transformation, County Hall, Dorchester

Want to respond to this letter for publication? send us a letter