At least three council houses could be built for the cost of restoring Stirling’s historic Christie Clock demolished in a botched repair effort.
The dramatic assertion was made during last week’s full meeting of Stirling Council which chose an £874,000 restoration of the listed structure involving extensive stonework repairs.
The three cheaper options were: restoration of the clock head with a new stone column (£827,850), a new stone clock head and column (£808,753) and the retention of the plinth with capping (£33,800) to restore the clock at a future date.
At the meeting Stirling Council Conservative leader Neil Benny pointed to the £678,460 figure within the full £873,460 restoration option one (minus fees of £95,000 and contingency £100,000).
He said: “You can build three houses for that. The individual cost of the stone alone is enough to build more than one house.
“That’s a huge amount of money. This is money that we shouldn’t have to be spending because we are effectively just covering for a mistake that has been made in the past.
“We will spend this money and we will have the same clock that we had a year and a half ago.”
Earlier this year Stirling CAB released a ‘snapshot’ report which revealed that Stirling Council had the third highest percentage of people in temporary homeless accommodation after Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Capping the plinth, option four, councillor Benny said, had appeared an attractive option since money is exceptionally tight, but he described this as kicking the matter into the long grass – and costs in future could be significantly higher.
Option one represented “the best opportunity” that the council had to fulfil its obligations to the people of Stirling in restoring the clock.
Councillor Benny added that Stirling Council had to look after its assets in the future to avoid the “huge regretful costs that we have to undertake today.”
Stirling Council’s audit committee had heard late 2023, a few months after the shocking September demolition of the clock, that the “catastrophe” had been caused by “a jaw-dropping sequence of missed opportunities” and “systematic failure”.
Of the 21 councillors in attendance, the £874k Christie Clock restoration was backed by 19 in total with Independent Bannockburn councillor Alasdair MacPherson abstaining and Dunblane and Bridge of Allan Green councillor Alasdair Tollemache voting against.
An option four amendment, retaining the plinth with a view to future restoration, put forward by councillor Tollemache and seconded by councillor MacPherson, was defeated by the same margin.