Call to flatten town hall

Moray Council was last night facing calls to demolish Elgin Town Hall after throwing an 11th-hour lifeline to the town’s pantomime group.

The annual festive show was thrown into doubt when the building’s boiler broke down.

But it is now poised to go ahead thanks to the local authority’s decision to spend £8,000 to hire atemporary boiler for the rest of the month.

But those calling for the Town Hall to be razed said the problems with the boiler were just one symptom of the crumbling building’s wider problems.

They added that plans to spend £1.25million next year refurbishing it would amount to throwing good money after bad.

Local SNP councillor Mike Shand is a long-term advocate of knocking down the Town Hall, which was built in 1961. He said: “I don’t profess to know much about architecture, but I know an ugly building when I see it. It’s a monstrous carbuncle, to use Prince Charles’s famous phrase.

“It brutal and looks like it could have been built in Soviet-era East Germany. I know of a number of conferences that would have come to Elgin but haven’t because the Town Hall just isn’t fit for purpose.”

Mr Shand said there was a move to demolish the Town Hall in 1998. But a campaign to save it led by a group of locals culminated in Historic Scotland listing the building, describing its design as being of “national significance”.