In a bid to save tax-payer cash, Edinburgh City Council is under offer to buy it’s 194,000 square foot Waverly House office space from landlords Aviva.
The £91m office space deal is estimated to save Edinburgh taxpayers more than £40m in the long term. The council are currently paying around £5m per year in rent to Avivia’s Norwich Union Life and Pension Fund (NULAP) for the offices, but the figures are set to rise every five years until 2021 taking rent to more than £8m per year.
The council met yesterday to discuss the office space purchase, which would be funded through the Public Works Loan Board. Edinburgh Council would have to pay the loan back over 28 years at 4.75%, a total cost of £6m per year.
Edinburgh City Council originally took the 20-year lease for the office space to house almost 2,000 staff but under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, could not buy the building as the expenditure of local authorities was limited. The introduction of the Prudential Code for Capital Finance in 2004 means that purchasing the office space is now possible.
Council leader, Jenny Dawe said: “For a mortgage which is less than 1% of our annual budget we can save tens of millions of pounds, the savings that we make will be reinvested in better services for the people of Edinburgh.”
The office space at Waverly Court was a joint development between the council, landowners Network Rail, NULAP as the funder and developer, and Miller Construction as the contractor. NULAP approached the council earlier this year to see if they wished to acquire the office space, which is a key part fo the Edinburgh Council’s ‘Fit for the Future’ office space consolidation plans.
Tags: Aviva