£200k bill to repair shopping centre’s crumbling car park

Safety work to repair crumbled concrete and rusted steel reinforcements at a Surrey shopping centre car park could cost a council more than £200,000. Mole Valley District Council is set to approve the repair work at the Swan Car Park in Leatherhead after its emergency budget passed through its extraordinary scrutiny committee.

The car park is fully owned and operated by the council with all revenue going straight into its coffers. The flip side is that it is also responsible for 100 per cent of the maintenance costs. The work will be carried out over a three-year period, which the council hopes will prevent anything more significant from developing.

It has set aside £116,496 for the first year, £49,745 in year two and £50,910 for the final year of the project for a total of £217,151. The meeting heard from cabinet member Councillor Keira Vyvyan-Robinson, who said that in 2022 the council carried out a five-year maintenance report that warned of the need to “monitor concrete and rebar (reinforced steel)” within the car park – and remedy any failings.

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For financial reasons the council decided not to go ahead with any work but the situation earlier this year “had deteriorated.” She said: “It’s not a health and safety issue at the moment however it is important that the works are remedied in order that they don’t deteriorate any further.”

The majority of the project’s budget is expected to be used “primarily in relation to the concrete frame and repairs to concrete which has crumbled”, Cllr Vyvyan-Robinson added. A final decision on whether to proceed will be made by the council’s cabinet committee on Wednesday, July 17.

Officers told the scrutiny meeting how surveyors had been monitoring the car park “visually” and that its condition has since stabilised. The repairs, the council hopes, would eliminate the need for regular observations.

Asked if there was a risk of concrete falling off the walls, and onto people or their cars, officers replied that there wasn’t an “immediate risk but the longer they leave it the greater that risk becomes”. Work will be scheduled to avoid the busiest times of the year and be done piecemeal to limit impact on people parking and minimise any revenue losses for the council.

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