Too Close to Call for County Hall

County Hall is closed but what if it closed permanently?

It's hard to believe that County Hall's doors have been closed to the public for 108 days, since March 24th. In actual fact, staff progressively began working from home from March 17th so there were very few people left when the building was officially shut.

The work within is now undertaken from a myriad of dispersed home locations. One of the farthest away is the chief executive herself, Judith Greenhalgh, who is currently working from somewhere in Manchester.

Over three months, the abrupt, unexpected and groundbreaking shift in the way in which the county council works has morphed from a temporary expedient to business as usual. At the beginning, everything went smoothly but it's now just routine.

It's not surprising, therefore, that the council itself is re-evaluating its position as regards its estate.

By 1999, the council operated from five main locations in four Denbighshire towns. Its early policy was to spread the economic benefit by placing employees not in one central location (as in Flintshire and Wrexham councils) but to scatter them in Prestatyn, Y Rhyl, Dinbych and Rhuthun/Ruthin. Rhuthun itself saw County Hall and, beforehand, sold off Trem Clwyd (the former ADAS building) and abandoned 46 Clwyd Street. Similarly, Prestatyn's Nant Hall offices were sold.

This left three central locations, one in Y Rhyl, another in Dinbych and County Hall itself.

A July 2020 paper reflecting upon the experiences during the central building closures showed that in a period of dispersed working services had continued largely unaffected. During post-coronavirus business as usual, the paper proposes that:

• Council staff wherever possible should in future continue to work from home

• All meetings should now be undertaken online and

• Face-to-face meetings in central buildings should only occur if fully justified.

Indeed, where meetings were necessary, these could possibly in future take place at libraries or connected hubs.

This has clear implications for a town whose main 'industry' is public administration. What will County Hall look like in the next one to five years? Will we actually require County Hall at all in future? If not, to what other uses could it be put?

Let us not minimise the importance of County Hall to Rhuthun. It's like a coalfield to South Wales and we know what devastation the closure of mining caused there. Realistically, it's all we've got in terms of significant employment and relatively decent salaries. Fashionable it may be the slam the county council but in reality it provides direct and indirect employment, keeps our house prices buoyant and our shops open. Given that most residents who directly wish to access services live in Dinbych or to its north, it doesn't take a genius to deduce that County Hall could be redundant—if there's a dispersed workforce-related building review.

To support the continued dispersal of employees, arguments include a:

• Reduction in greenhouse gasses because of fewer people commuting

• Better work-life balance, and a

• Greater economic impact on local communities near to where staff live, rather than a benefit to the three main towns in which Denbighshire continued to have offices.

And, I suppose, if (a) there are more people living in Rhuthun who commute to Denbighshire offices in Dinbych a'r Rhyl than (b) those who live outside Rhuthun who commute to County Hall, Rhuthun will continue to proposer. But that's a very big 'if'. I suspect in future that those people who commute into County Hall from afar will simply go to their nearest alternative location... if they have to go anywhere at all.