OLD TOWN HALL LEFT TO ROT?

CRUMBRIA: 15.6.2026

THE independent news website – Penrith Town News – has just done what our doomed local rags have not – asked what the frig is happening to Penrith Town Hall?

It is now exactly two years since the 121-year-old building was mothballed after more than a century of local government use.

Despite Wokemoreland & Farcical Clowncil making half-baked promises in press releases about turning the building into a “creative and cultural hub” – it’s hardly been a hive of activity.

Two years on, Penrith Town rightfully points out that under the Lib Dem dictatorship there are “no visible signs of any work beginning,” while the only signs of life are “overgrown grass and weeds”.

When Penrith Town Hall was shut two years ago, W&F Council staff were decanted into the disastrously pompous northern HQ, Voreda House.

Thanks to magnificent management, the £8.3m carbon neutral carbuncle cost around THREE times its original budget and arrived more than THREE years late.

Its now reportedly worth a piss poor £2.3m — about £6m less than it cost taxpayers.

***Pompous HQ: £8.3m Voreda House, Penrith.***

The 8-Bit building itself – described as “modern and fit-for-purpose” flooded last September due to an alleged “plumbing failure” necessitating contracts of £800,000 to fix, which the Council is said to be desperately trying to claw back.

(Expect a costly legal tussle?)

A petition last autumn for a parliamentary public inquiry to throw much-needed daylight on the matter was knocked back.

Which was convenient.

Because when a Council appears to be pouring bucketfuls of public money down every available drain, the last thing anyone in authority wants is Joe Public prising off the manhole cover.

The verdict in Penrith of all these gross inefficiencies (which extend all the way back to former Tory and ‘Rainbow coalitions’ running Eden District Council) is not exactly glowing.

With W&F bean counters expecting to be £40 million short and urgently needing to save bucks or bring in cash, residents joke that the former Town Hall could end up flogged off for peanuts.