BARROW BULLDOZED PENRITH PROTECTED

CRUMBRIA: 24.3.2026

HAVING started the wrecking ball swinging at Barrow’s Forum and Market Hall last week, the Liberal Democrats on Wokemoreland & Farcical Council take a different view of its buildings elsewhere.

It’s just crept out that it is spending £830,000 in emergency repairs on its Council HQ in Penrith.

They only opened 21 months ago and cost £8.3m.

Called Voreda House, the eco-tastic northern headquarters for Wokemoreland & Farcical Council, was christened ‘The Shite House’ thanks to sewage pouring down the stairwells.

**Voreda House needs more repairs. ©Penrith Town News.**

The Net Zero building was THREE years late and cost taxpayers nearly TRIPLE the original estimate.

Last September it suffered a devastating flood. Sewer pipes backed up, foul water hit the ground floor, and six months later the first floor still remains closed, with poor Council staff unable to entirely return.

Thanks to some proper journalism by hyper-local news website Penrith Town News (right), it has now emerged that the Lib Dem-dictatorship continues to fling around the fivers.

One new contract worth £427,000 has been handed out to fix a defective water pipe at Voreda House. Another, worth £400,000, is to deal with sewer pipes after flooding from foul water, says Penrith Town’s exclusive.

Remember! This the same acclaimed eco-building for which the Council previously had to apply to itself to install an OUTDOOR GENERATOR in case the power failed.

Yet when it opened in June 2024, a Council director hailed the Minecraft-style oddity as “a fit-for-purpose building.”

Lib Dem climate preacher, Cllr Giles Archiballs, charging ahead with his crusade to make the Council Net Zero by 2037, has previously called it “pioneering!”

Meanwhile, the long vacated former Council HQ in Penrith – Mansion House (below) – gathers moss and remains stubbornly unsold.

It’s just gone on the market AGAIN.

In 2022, it was hoped a buyer had been found but that deal clearly went the way of so much else in this saga – down the drain.

And despite costing £8.3m, Voreda House itself was valued as only being worth £2.3m. Quite what it’s worth now is anybody’s guess.

Why no Director has been SACKED and no Councillor has RESIGNED is a mystery known only to Wokemoreland & Farcical Clowncil.

So while Barrow’s council-run buildings face the JCBs, the money hose in Penrith remains very much on.

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In March 2024, this is how the Chronic described Voreda House. Were we wrong?

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Voreda House has proved such a farce that residents living nearby created a Facebook page to document every disaster of the Net Zero success story.

READ: PENRITH TOWN NEWS: Council Pours Another £830K Down The Drain At Voreda House.

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