Hopes people power could save ‘vital’ Shrewsbury culture venue from being sold off

The social enterprise currently running the English Bridge Workshop delivered a petition to Shropshire Council and says it fears the authority could sell the building in order to help address its ongoing budget crisis.

But in response the council says financial concerns are “secondary” to ensuring similar community assets are protected, and is negotiating to find the best way forward.

Organisers at Makespace CIC, the community interest company which took over running of the building last year, want to see the building remain in public ownership through a Community Asset Transfer (CAT) scheme.

The organisation is making plans to restore and renovate the 19th century former Abbey School building on the edge of the town centre – but say they are unable to access grant funding until they can secure a long term lease.

“We did the first CAT submission just before Christmas [2023] and then it all went quite quiet,” said director Joey McAleese.

“We did the submission and they asked us for some more information and we did that, and then they said in March we’re not going to take this any further because we’re looking at our financial situation.

“It was partly our fear that we’d had little or no contact with the council, and there’s this whole grey area of what is community usage when it comes to the CAT transfer.”

The company offers out two halls for community hire and hosts a wide range of community-based cultural activities and workshops from the facility, while hosting a number of resident artists and makers in seven rented studios on the site.

But the council says the income generated from these uses, despite being used to support the building’s use as a not-for-profit enterprise, means it may fall into a commercial category.

“That’s the crux of it really, it’s how do you run a building of this size [without a commercial element]? If you want to cultivate diversity and different experiences into the arts in Shrewsbury, you have to allow people to earn a living,” she added.

“There’s nothing black and white in the CAT application, it just says majority community uses, so we’ve just re-submitted with lots of amendments, with some extra data to show that in every way we’re for community use and not for profit.

“We need a long term lease. The building hasn’t had nearly anything done to it in the last 40 years – it’s not accessible, there’s no insulation and the heating is quite old. That’s a limit for us to get people into the space – we’re increasing footfall but during the winter months it’s difficult.

“We’ve talked to lots of different lottery funds that would be willing to fund us if we can secure this long lease, and then we plan to renovate the space over a couple of years to make it more eco-friendly, making sure it’s ready for the 21st century and fit for purpose for the community.

“If you were looking at this objectively you’d see the socio-economic value that a building like this can bring. We’re not asking for them to help us [financially], we’re just asking for a long lease.”

Speaking at last week’s full council meeting, where the council voted to hold off on offering assurances about the building’s future while negotiations continued, cabinet member for housing and assets Dean Carroll said a commercial rental option was on the table only as a “secondary option” if Makespace were unable to meet the criteria for the CAT.

“We’ve held an initial meeting already to try and help give a steer to makespace in amending their community asset transfer application to give the best chance possible of aligning with community asset transfer policy,” he said.

“We can’t just make exemptions to policy because we have a sympathy for the argument made.

“Nobody has any questions about the good intentions, good work and goodwill and the work of Makespace however we can’t rule out that down the road community asset transfer applications could be received from organisations that don’t have the same ethos.

“The financial element is secondary or even tertiary to this application, the primary driver is getting the process right so that we can protect our assets for the long term.”